Danang sees lowest growth since 2012
Danang sees lowest growth since 2012
Despite achieving growth in most economic sectors in 2019, Danang City’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP) growth rate was not only the lowest in almost 10 years but also the lowest among the five centrally governed cities.
Tran Van Vu, director of the Danang Statistics Office, said the main reason was that some sectors, such as the industrial and real estate sectors, had very low growth, from 3% to 4%. Import and export turnover increased by less than 1% year-on-year.
The service sector (the largest contributor to the city’s economy, at over 83%) only saw growth of 7.65%, down from 8.2% in 2018. Several sectors maintained growth, but this was not enough to offset the downward trend.
“Therefore, Danang’s GRDP in 2019 is estimated to increase by 6.47% over the previous year, which is the lowest growth in the 2016-2019 period. The growth rate was only higher than in 2012 in the 2011-2019 period,” Vu remarked.
He added that this made Danang the city with the lowest growth among Hanoi, Haiphong, Danang, HCMC and Can Tho and third lowest after Thua Thien-Hue and Binh Dinh among five localities in the Key Economic Zone in Central Vietnam (Thua Thien-Hue, Danang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and Binh Dinh).
However, Vu revealed that Danang City’s GRDP per capita in 2019 was the highest in the zone and ranked fourth among the municipalities, at VND95.67 million, or US$4,095, up 4.37% compared with 2018.
Le Dan, a statistical analyst from Danang University of Economics, stated that Danang City’s modest economic growth was due to a number of challenges. In particular, the low disbursement of public investment was a bottleneck, affecting economic growth.
In 2019, the city disbursed VND4.398 trillion, only making up 73.64% of the initial plan. This was caused by slow site clearance and compensation and inadequacies in the Public Investment Law.
The ongoing African swine fever outbreak, low development of the manufacturing and processing industry and slowing exports of some major items also contributed to the outcome.
