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What Is the Impact of Viet Kieu Investment in Vietnam?
Since the early 1990s, there has been extensive business reporting on the contribution that foreign capital has had on Vietnam’s economic development. Over the last seven years, there have been good anecdotal media reports on the phenomenon of overseas Vietnamese investing in Vietnam. Though interesting, none of these reports provide comprehensive data on the impact and significance of Viet Kieu money on Vietnam’s economy today. Thus in 2009, I spent about eight months combing through academic papers, business journals, government data from Vietnam and the World Bank, as well as interviewing experts from academia, think tanks, business, and government. Though far from complete, I arrived at the following answers to several key questions:
How much money do overseas Vietnamese send home to Vietnam each year? What forms does this investment flow take?
For my calculations, I assumed that 10% of the US$ 39 billion in recorded overseas Vietnamese remittances from 2000-2009 was directed towards actual investment (funding family businesses, buying property, etc.). Of course, solid data is every difficult to gather as there is capital that is not reported (gold bars, money in suitcases, etc.) or not explicitly labeled as coming from overseas Vietnamese interests. Thus, this estimate is very conservative.
incredible report. thank you for sharing.
Thank you for an interesting report. It would be interesting to get data–if it exists–of overseas Vietnamese remittances from 1975 onward, and compare the figures over several periods.