- Monday, 09 July 2012
- Roger Mitton
- As the famous American financial strategist Warren Buffet likes to say:
“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming
naked.”
For some years now, Vietnam’s Communist Party leaders have frolicked in the surf, their brazen nudity hidden by bubbling waves of frothy, easy-credit growth.
But as is now frighteningly evident, there has been far too much froth and not enough substance.
Starting soon after Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung took office in June 2006, it was clear that the tide was drifting out and exposing some very unsavory figures.
Of course, the full extent of Dung’s naked incompetence was not immediately apparent.
Growth rates for the first two years of his administration chugged along at about 7 per cent; less than others in the region, but still not too bad.
Concurrently, a campaign against corruption, the nation’s endemic Achilles’ heel, was launched – with Dung himself becoming head of the new Anti-Corruption Steering Committee.
All fine and dandy and everyone cheered.
Unfortunately, it was soon apparent that the rosy economic figures were built on sand and about to be washed away by the retreating tide.
And that anti-corruption committee was a toothless quango designed by Dung to deflect attention from the staggering misappropriation of funds by the state-owned enterprises.
Yet for some reason, many journalists, diplomats and even alleged experts continued to report that everything was swell.
To hear them prattle on about “dynamic” Vietnam and its “booming” economy was totally baffling – as it still is today.
If only they would just Google “economic rot in Hanoi”, or “Vietnam’s financial woes” or anything similar and see the cascade of fiscal obituaries.
What is really shocking is that the malaise is far worse now than it was when Dung took over.
As Vietnam’s own General Statistics Office reported last month: “The economy is facing major challenges.” When the regime itself says that, you know things are pretty desperate.
And they are. According to the GSO, 70 per cent of the country’s businesses reported losses in the first half of this year and nearly 22,000 went bankrupt.
The inventory index of many products surged sharply, while consumption continued to decline – basically, people had less money, and the money they had was worth less, so they weren’t spending.
Vietnam’s currency, the dong, remains prone to regular devaluations – it lost 10 per cent of its value last year and is forecast to drop another 2 to 3 per cent this year.
All the country’s state-owned banks are effectively bankrupt due to the massive non-performing loans they are carrying.
Property prices, which fell 10 to 20 per cent last year, are expected to dip another 5 to 10 per cent this year.
And Vietnam’s trade imbalance not only remains huge, but it is growing – its state budget deficit alone was $2.87 billion to June 15, equal to 42.8 per cent of the full-year estimate and nearly double that of last year.
The stock market is among the world’s worst performers, and the much-heralded growth rate is down to 4.4 per cent and falling.
In short, Vietnam’s top-down command economy is dying. As the World Bank said last month, there is a drastic need for structural reforms in the state-owned companies, banks and public investments.
Thankfully, the party has finally got the message and Dung is under fire.
After it was officially conceded that “corruption is still taking place in a rampant, serious and complicated fashion in multiple areas”, he was sacked as head of the anti-corruption committee.
That was humiliating enough, but now there is open talk in many ministries, and even in the military, that Dung simply cannot cut the mustard.
Of course, we should not only blame him and his cronies, but also the people themselves for putting up with this dreadful performance.
Instead, they should heed the regime-changing message from Myanmar to Tunisia: If you want reform, it can happen.
The University of Wollongong in Dubai has joined with the
National Research Foundation (NRF) in the United Arab Emirates, or UAE,
to set up the country’s first doctoral training centre.
The agreement between Wollongong in Dubai, an offshoot of Australia’s
University of Wollongong, and the NRF, which is an initiative of the UAE
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, was outlined in a
1 July article published by Trade Arabia.
The new UAE Doctoral Training Centre will focus on building sustainable
research partnerships with government, industry and other universities
as well as providing high-quality postgraduate education and addressing
the lack of doctoral training in the UAE.
The centre will strive to improve the retention of students in doctoral
programmes and help to create uniform research standards, and will host
conferences to facilitate interaction between postgraduate students and
supervisors from various universities.
It will also set up doctoral student networks and provide an electronic
platform to facilitate ongoing communication between students at
different universities.
The UAE move will help to tackle challenges facing Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) states, including limited supply of knowledge workers to
support innovation plans, highlighted in a 3 July report, Global Innovation Index 2012: Stronger innovation linkages for global growth.
The report indicated that GCC states were among a host of resource-rich,
high-income "innovation underperformers" when comparing innovation
performance against gross domestic product per capita.
Its findings were echoed by a study prepared by the Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) and reported in a 1 July Gulf Times article.
The GOIC study pointed out that despite many Gulf countries heading
towards a knowledge-based economy with significant results achieved –
especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – the contribution of GCC
states to the global knowledge-based economy is 0.2% compared to 4% to
4.5% in developed countries.
Speaking to University World News, Ghassan Aouad, president of
the University of Wollongong in Dubai, said doctoral programmes were
relatively new in the region “but have quickly expanded in the past few
years.
“This makes doctoral training crucial in creating a network of
well-trained researchers and future research leaders whose expertise
will help guide the UAE and other states in the Gulf and the Arab World.
“It is of critical importance to establish other similar centres in the
region in order to support and promote knowledge-based economies,” Aouad
argued.
“The formal research training which will be supported by the centre will
enhance the human developments efforts undertaken by the UAE
government, improve the research output of the nation and result in the
production of research on issues related to the UAE and the Gulf region.
Mohammed Kuchari, an associate professor of microbiology at Saudi
Arabia’s King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, welcomed the new
development, which he said could provide a “good model for excellence in
pan-Arab doctoral training” and help to create the world-class research
community and powerful science base essential for the knowledge
economy.
According to a November 2011 Arab research strategy, there are about nine million students in 470 higher education institutions in the region, but only 10% are postgraduates.
To enhance the new centre’s role, Kuchari said, it should develop
parameters for measuring quality assurance in doctoral training and
encourage the setting up of university consortia and networks “to ensure
that doctoral training is undertaken in a strong research environment”.
It could also promote “the vital role of doctoral training to business
and industrial communities” and the value of doctoral training for
careers beyond academia, Kuchari told University World News.
Richard Gold, an expert in innovation, patent law and policy, as well as
being a law professor at Canada-based McGill University and the
director of The Innovation Partnership, said regional training for
doctoral students had been “one of the critical missing pieces in
developing scientific capacity.
“Doctoral students who study abroad often remain where they learn as
they develop links, both personal and professional, where they live.
Thus, developing countries suffer from a brain drain as some of their
best students move abroad,” Gold told University World News.
“Locating training at home will provide students with the option of
remaining in their home countries while receiving a first-class
education. Increasing links with top international universities to
provide local training will build local capacity to participate in the
innovation economy,” Gold added.
“While this is a long-term investment, it is critical if the UAE and
neighbouring states wish to build the capacity to innovate, build local
enterprises and develop entrepreneurial expertise.”
Gold said it was important to ensure that such centres offered
first-class education, and so they should not compromise on the quality
of instruction, equipment and laboratories.
“One of the best ways of ensuring this is to collaborate with an
internationally recognised university,” Gold argued, including some
training at the overseas university “to broaden students’ intellectual
horizons” for periods that did not displace students for too long.
“What the UAE and its neighbours offers to these universities is well
educated students who are eager to learn as well as the ability to fund
research, which is of increasing importance to publicly-financed
universities.
“Developing these relationships can therefore be win-win as research
relies increasingly on international collaborations that require a
significant number of highly qualified students, laboratories and
research funding,” Gold concluded.
“As
a security guard, I have to work alone every night, standing in front
of the company from 6pm until 6am,” Vireak said. “I cannot even think of
falling asleep, I am too afraid someone will rob something, like a car
or other things that the company owns. If that happened, I wouldn’t be
able to pay the company back for what was lost.”
