ABSTRACT
In spite of their predominant weight in developing countries and countries in transition, the informal economy remains largely neglected by public policies. Vietnam is no exception to this rule, quite the contrary. In the euphoria which accompanied the exceptional success of the policy of opening up and the implementation of a market economy (Doi Moi) in 1986, the Vietnamese authorities acted as if the informal economy did not exist, or was about to rapidly disappear. Inspired by a simplified and “developmentalist” conception of structural change, they consider that economic transition would entail a huge movement of the workforce from the agricultural sector towards the sector of big enterprises. In these conditions, there was no need to implement specific support policies for the informal sector, which remains to this day a veritable no man’s land for the country’s authorities. The financial crisis which hit Vietnam in 2009 might have been an opportunity to take into account the role of the informal sector as a cushion to limit induced tensions in the labour market. This opportunity was not taken. Once again, all attention focused on the rise of visible unemployment and the support to be provided to the formal sector to kick start the economy and create jobs. In fact, the only existing measures concerning the informal economy are of a repressive nature, notably operations to drive away itinerant sellers, which are both inappropriate and inefficient, undertaken in the framework of urban “beautification” policies in Vietnam’s big cities.
