Foreign Minister Says IMF Criticism is ‘Inaccurate’

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Sept. 15 – Foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Pham Gia Khiem, dismissed the International Monetary Fund’s criticism last week citing the lack of transparency in macro-economic policies as “inaccurate.”

“When the global crisis happened, one of the top priorities for Vietnam was to keep the stability of our macro-economic growth,” he told The Financial Times. “The second priority was to sustain transparency.”

The IMF said in its report that the government’s current policy may dissuade foreign investors from Vietnam. It said that government reform must be accompanied by increased transparency, adding that timely release of key economic data is critical because it sends a clear message for assessing the economy and policy intentions.

The last few years have been rough for the Vietnamese economy as it struggled to rein in the effects of the Global Financial Crisis, rocketing inflation and a gaping trade deficit.

This led authorities to devalue the Vietnamese currency three times since November. On the other hand, the IMF report was not all bad news.  It highlighted Vietnam’s GDP performance as one of the better ones in the region, saying that the economy held up well during the global crisis.

A copy of the IMF report can be found here.