HCMC – Some 42% of European businesses active in Vietnam may expand their operations in the country, the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) said in a recent report.
European investor confidence in Vietnam’s growth potential slightly decreased amid global economic uncertainties, as the Business Climate Index (BCI) continued to fall in the third quarter, according to a EuroCham survey released on October 17.
BCI is a regular barometer of the business sentiment among European companies operating in Vietnam and is conducted by YouGov, one of the world’s leading research and data analytics companies.
Though the economic growth reached a record high, at 13.67%, the BCI dropped to 62.2 percentage points, down 6.4 percentage points over the second quarter and 10.8 percentage points early this year.
“This may result from global economic uncertainties caused by escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, lingering inflationary pressures, global labor shortages and stagnant growth across economies,” the EuroCham report said.
However, BCI was still 10.2 percentage points higher than in 2019, the year before Covid-19 struck, and surpassed the fourth quarter of 2020 by 1.2 percentage points.
According to Eurocham, the number of respondents believing the nation’s economy would stabilize and improve in the fourth quarter this year dropped by 18% to 42% over the previous quarter, while the number who thought the country would slip into recession rose by seven percentage points to 19%.
That said, 45% of business leaders felt positive about their business outlook in late 2022, down a mere four percentage points over the last quarter.
Global economic stagnation has made the current situation look bleaker than January. The remaining months of the year may worsen, Alain Cany, chair of EuroCham, said in a press release.
“However, the BCI result showed a promising future for Vietnam’s economy in the next two or three years,” he added.
