ABSTRACT
Vietnam has successfully managed its transition from a centrally planned command economy to a ‘socialist-based market’ economy. The first decade (1987-97) of Doi Moi was devoted to building the foundation of main macroeconomic and institutional components. Land reform in the agricultural sector, price liberalization and wide-ranging economic reforms were introduced. As a result, the economy has achieved a steady growth of 7.3 percent per year for the past 10 years (1990-2000), prompting a rapid reduction of poverty. The living standards have improved markedly, but the benefits are distributed unevenly, as shown by Vietnam’s 1992-3 Living Standard Survey (LSS) where 90 percent of the 51 percent considered as poor live in the rural area (see GSO 1994). According to preliminary results from the latest 1997-8 LSS, the ratio of absolute poor,1 has dropped from 51 percent of the population in 19923 to around 37 percent in 1998.
