Restructuring the economy and adopting a new growth model are topical issues that attract great attention currently. The paper tries to provide a panoramic view over Vietnam’s growth model in the past two decades. | UEH-JED January 2012 | 17 Problems with Vietnam’s Growth Model in 1991-2010 in Retrospect HOÀNG THỊ CHỈNH* ABSTRACT Restructuring the economy and adopting a new growth model are topical issues that attract great attention currently. The paper tries to provide a panoramic view over Vietnam’s growth model in the past two decades. The growth model Vietnam has been building seemed suitable at first but becomes unsuitable when facing demands from the domestic economy and challenges posed by economic integration in the context of global competition. What are characteristics of the growth model adopted by Vietnam? What consequences has it produced? What are characteristics of an expected model and how can it be realized? These are questions that the paper wants to discuss to a certain extent. Keywords: Growth model, restructuring, sustainable development, capital, labor, natural resources. 1. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRESENT GROWTH MODEL a. An extensive development based on capital, labor and natural resources: The gross investment as percentage of the GDP in Vietnam rose steadily over years from in 1990 to in 2010 ( times). Compared with Southeast Asian countries and developing economies in the world, Vietnam’s ratio of gross investment to the GDP is the highest (Lê & Nguyễn, 2006, p. 13). According to a study conducted by Statistics Institute under the GSO (Thời báo kinh tế Việt Nam, 2011, p. 8), capital accounted for of economic growth in 2001-2005, that is, increases in gross investment made the GDP rise by a year. Another study used for drafting the Socioeconomic Development Strategy for 2011-2020 (op. cit.) found that the gross investment explained for 55% of the economic growth in 2006-2010, that is, increases in investment made the GDP rise by a year. It is thus apparent that the gross investment has played a decisive role in the economic development in the past decade. Regarding the labor, Vietnam enjoys a huge and .
