Accession to the WTO: A Milestone in the History of Vietnam

Oskar Weggel

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 2007, vol. 26, issue 2, 79-95

Abstract: Becoming member of the World Trade Organisation was the decisive follow-up of Vietnam s reform resolutions taken in 1986. Nevertheless the process of acceding the club was not a walkover but took the SRV not less than two decades, marked by seven steps: The doi-moi-resolution(1986), the normalization of her relationship with the international financial organisations (1993), the formal applying for membership to the WTO (1995), the membership of the ASEAN (1995), of the ASEM (1996) and of the APEC (1998), and the accession to the WTO (2006/07). Having achieved this final destination, Vietnam s expectations continue to be strangely mixed. On the one hand there are at least three great opportunities for the country: to join the global trade market, to absorb capital, know-how and management, and to improve its status in the international economy and politics. On the other hand Vietnam has to meet several challenges coming up in different realms: The SRV is partially afraid of becoming confronted with a disintegration of its economy: Whereas the strong secondary sector is supposed to continue to grow, the service industry and particularly the agriculture may decline at the same time. Functionally there is much concern about efficiency and competitiveness of the economy in general and about the qualification of workers and the flexibility of the state owned enterprises in particular. Last not least there remains a conceptional problem to be settled which could trouble the political leadership. The more the Vietnamese enterprises are sticking to WTO-rules, the more the authoritarian tutelage of the CPV-leadership is becoming undermined.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:soaktu:v:15:y:2007:i:2:p:79-95

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/suedostasien-aktuell

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs from Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Bünte ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and Howard Loewen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).