HANOI: Vietnam ranks 141st in the 2018 Index, lagging behind all regional countries, though its economic freedom score increased by 0.7 points to 53.1. Vietnam is regarded as a “mostly unfree” economy.
Dr Tran Quang Tuyen, Associate Dean of Faculty of Political Economy, VNU University of Economics and Business, and a member of the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, said Vietnam’s ranking did not surprise him because he has been researching the index for many years.
The essence of the market economy is the freedom to do business, to exchange goods and to work.
A full market economy is an economy which has a high level of economic freedom, and therefore, the government’s intervention in resource allocation and enterprises’ operation must be minimal.
Moreover, government needs to have a legal system and enforcement agencies which can effectively implement the rights of ownership and create an effective legal framework for enterprises’ operation.The indexes reflect the quality of governments and the development levels of different kinds of markets (labor, monetary, finance, goods and services).
The strong point of the component indexes is that they can measure and quantify the development of market economy in countries and compare the development levels of countries,” he said.
Tuyen went on to say that if looking into component indexes, one would see that Vietnam has made greater efforts than other countries in property protection, government spending, tax burden, and labor, monetary and trade freedom.
