Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung attends a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 28, 2010

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung Friday said there are grounds to predict Vietnam’s economy will expand around 7 percent this year.

Amidst the global economic downturn, Vietnam was among a few economies that still posted high economic growth last year, of 5.3 percent, he said.

The country is improving its market mechanisms to create better competition and boost economic integration, Dung said, noting that Vietnam would become an industrial nation in 2020.

Dung said he expects economic growth to reach 7-8 percent a year by 2011 and 2012, the average growth rate of the past two decades.

The PM’s latest forecast is higher than the 6 percent estimate of the International Monetary Fund. The government was previously targeting growth of 6.5 percent.

Vietnam is fully capable of containing inflation at 7 percent in 2010, Dung said.

Consumer prices rose 7.62 percent in January from the same month last year, accelerating from 6.52 percent in December, according to the General Statistics Office.

PM Dung also told reporters on Friday that the World Economic Forum on East Asia 2010 will be held in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the World Economic Forum’s plenary session on Friday, entitled “Reshaping global governance”, Dung said it’s urgent to achieve greater democratization in global governance to better reflect the roles and interests of countries, especially developing nations.

Source: Thanh Nien, Agencies