Strategic Services Policies and International Trade Integration in Vietnam

The aim of this paper is to analyze Vietnam's services policies and to evaluate their effectiveness and consistency, in the framework of the country's increasing international economic integration. Among the various services sectors, the paper focuses specifically on a sub-group, namely strategic services,(and on energy and telecommunications in particular. The paper is organized as follows. The introduction sketches a few basic facts about the Vietnamese economy. Section 1 underlines the key role of strategic services, and describes the main tenets of economic reforms in the domain of services. Section 2 analyzes the international trade dimension of services policies in Vietnam, presently characterized by the recent signing of the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) with the US and by the ongoing multilateral negotiations aimed at accessing the WTO. Section 3 focuses on Vietnam's policies in the area of strategic services, with particular attention for energy and telecommunications. Section 5 proposes a few conclusive remarks. The Annex reports a few basic facts and figures on Vietnam's services sector.