Vietnam’s economy will begin to recover from the end of this year and quickly return to growth levels seen before it was hit by the fallout of the financial crisis, the country’s deputy prime minister said on Tuesday.

“By the end of 2009 and from the beginning of 2010, Vietnam will return to its growth path and the difficulties from the end of 2007 will be settled by the end of 2009. So our growth has been delayed by two years,” Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung told a business conference.

Asked why he was so confident that the revival will take such a short time, Hung said Vietnam’s had a new economy that has had strong growth in the past. He also cited the quality of its labour force and the general attractiveness of its domestic market as factors that will help it to recover quickly.

He said the strength of domestic demand “will certainly” push the economy before the rest of the world is out of the woods.

Vietnam projects annual gross domestic product growth of 6.5 percent this year after a slowdown to 6.2 percent in 2008 from 8.48 percent in 2007. The International Monetary Fund has forecast 5 percent for this year.

Earlier this month, a state newspaper quoted a forecast by an arm of the Planning and Investment Ministry for growth in the first quarter of this year to slow to between 4 percent and 4.5 percent from a year earlier. It would be a rapid slowdown from annual growth of 7.4 percent in the first quarter of 2008.

Source: Reuters