Vietnam is one of the fastest growing countries in the world and its economy has shown

resilience to trade wars and slower growth rates in neighbouring China. This accelerated
economic pace is due to labour shifting from agriculture to manufacturing and services, private
investment, a strong tourist sector, higher wages, and accelerating urbanisation. Exports
constitute an increasingly significant contribution to Vietnam's GDP and certain sectors, such as
industrial production, textile, electronics and seafood production have been growing rapidly.
Growth was expected to reach 7% in 2019, down from a 10-year high of 7.1% a year earlier.
According to the updated IMF forecasts from 14th April 2020, due to the outbreak of the
COVID-19, GDP growth is expected to fall to 2.7% in 2020 and pick up to 7% in 2021, subject
to the post-pandemic global economic recovery.

According to the IMF, government debt reached 54.3% of GDP in 2019, down from 55.6% a
year earlier, and is expected to edge down further to 53.3% in 2020 and to 52.5%in 2021. This is
a result of tightening monetary policies and limits on new government guarantees. Inflation
dropped to 2.8% from 3.5% in 2018, and is forecast to average 3.2% in 2020 and 3.9% in 2021
by the latest World Economic Outlook of the IMF (April 2020). However, this was 0.2% lower
than the Washington-based bank's previous estimate. Diversified trade structure, rising wages
and domestic consumption are the backbone of the Vietnamese economic growth. Nonetheless,
labour costs remain competitive, which help attract foreign investments to the country. Economic
challenges include lack of infrastructure, business climate shortcomings, pending public sector
reforms, growing inequality, a weak banking system. Tax reforms and privatisation of state-
owned companies helped compensate the budget deficit in 2019. Around 40% of Vietnam's debt
has medium or long-term maturity, a significant risk considering 40% of said debt is
denominated in foreign currencies and represent a currency risk. Nonetheless, public authorities
continue to intervene in both directions to keep the Dong within a narrow band against major
international currencies and accrue foreign reserves.

The unemployment rate in Vietnam is particularly low. It reached 2.2% in 2019 and it is
expected to remain stable in the following years. Social challenges include poverty reduction,
improving higher education, and allowing freedom of the press. Transparency International ranks
Vietnam as 96th out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index 2019, a significant
improvement from the 117th spot a year earlier.
Main Sectors of Industry

Vietnam's economy is based on large state-owned industries such as textiles, food, furniture,
plastics and paper as well as tourism and telecommunications. Agriculture represents 14.7% of
GDP and employs 39.4% of the total workforce. Main crops include rice, coffee, cashew nuts,
corn, pepper, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cotton, rubber and tea as well as aquaculture. While
agricultural trade surplus edged up on the year in 2019, the livestock industry continued to suffer
from various diseases, including swine flu.

Industry contributes 34.2% of GDP and employs 25.8% of the total workforce. The energy sector
has boomed in recent years (coal, hydrocarbons, electricity, cement, steel industry). Despite
being a 'newcomer' in the oil industry, Vietnam has become the third largest Southeast Asian
producer. The country has also invested in high value-added industries such as cars, electronic
and computer technologies (software). Manufacturing rose by 10.9% year-on-year in 2019,
contributing a record industrial trade surplus of over USD 10 billion (Vietnamese government).

Services represent 45.5% of GDP and employ 34.7% of the total workforce. Main services
include tourism and telecommunications. Double-digit growth is expected from the Vietnamese
retail sector from 2019 to 2024 

Communicative abilities ... are ways of creating or re-creating discourse indifferent modes ... in
brief, [this activity] involves an understanding of thecommunicative value of linguistic elements
in context and this is based on aknowledge of how these elements may serve as clues which
can beinterpreted by reference to shared conventions of communication.
Communication skills are ways of creating or recreating discourse in different modes. In brief,
this activity involves an understanding of the communicative value of linguistics elements in
context and this is based on knowledge of how these elements may serve as clues which can be
interpreted by reference to shared conventions of communication (Widowson 1978). In lighter
terms, it is the ability to use language skills to pass information from one person to another and
we can only approve communicative success when the sender’s message is understood by the
receiver