True tea lovers always tell me that older tea is never as
satisfying as fresh, and watching the tea leaves for the VN economy appears to
be similar. Recent data say that measured remittances are far below
international data, that FDI is projected to dramatically decline, and that
there is an unmeasurable increase in the effect of ecommerce. Business people,
locally and globally know the facts as they see them, and the significant gap
between the legacy data reporting and modern economic phenomena is a problem
only if you are married to old models.
To their credit, the traditional data gatherers get the
bigger flows -- the enormous garment, seafood, and agriculture movements
(although the invoices may be net of fees), the formal investments in
infrastructure, and a consistent view of tourism. But if you are trying to predict the future
movements, the marginal changes are outside the umbrella of traditional data.
Certainly the structure and volume of remittances has
escaped official channels, and that is good for individuals and troublesome for
the government (but probably not VN as a country), and the digitization of
commerce generally, but particularly internationally make tracking of
investments impossible for everyone to measure not just the VN government.
The bad news is that VN is no different from the rest of the
world. In all countries nontraditional
measures of the economy are being added and shared -- but outside government
channels. The news flows are no help, since they still think that the share
market is a casino and focus on short term movements most of the time. To read
the pace and direction of the VN economy, which looks pretty good even without
TPP, we need more sharing of admittedly anecdotal nontraditional measures.
Do you have a favorite statistic you watch? Fresh tea brews
great satisfaction.
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