Day: January 10, 2023

The announcement by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam that the country’s economy likely grew 8.02% last year led to celebration among senior members of the Communist Party, but some economists cast doubt on the accuracy of the estimate and warned conditions may be tougher this year.

On Dec. 20, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh called the data “a proud, bright spot in the context of a developing country,” saying it showed the economy was progressing.

His optimism was shared by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

“In the context of many difficulties and great challenges … thanks to the cooperation and efforts of the whole Party, the people, the army … the economy continues to grow rapidly, reaching 8%, much higher than the plan and a high level compared to other countries in the region and around the world,” he said at a Jan. 3 conference reviewing the government’s work last year and outlining its tasks for 2023.

Not verified

Some economists are concerned about the reliability of the data.

Economist Nguyen Tri Hieu, who has over 30 years’ experience working in banking and finance in the U.S., Germany and Vietnam, told RFA that accuracy depends on the method of calculation and the ability of the statistician, information which is not available in Vietnam

“The problem is that there is no agency to verify the statistics of the General Department of Statistics. It’s the only number we know,” he said.

Hieu said in order to gauge the health of the economy it is important to consider factors such as workers’ living standards, social security, health and safety, and environmental issues.

Norway-based economist Nguyen Huy Vu, who worked for Germany’s Bundesbank, said the 8% growth figure has no meaning without considering factors that would indicate whether people are better or worse off than previous years.

“[If] the living standards of workers are not improved, many jobs are not created, the health of the economy is not increased, businesses do not increase, then the number, no matter how high, becomes meaningless,” he said.

‘People are very poor’ 

The owner of an electronics assembly business in Ho Chi Minh City told RFA people’s lives, especially those of unskilled workers, have been extremely difficult over the past year.

Nguyen Dinh De said processing orders have fallen because Europe and the U.S. entered what he called “an economic crisis.”

In addition, the war in Ukraine pushed up global raw material prices, particularly oil. From June to September 2022, gasoline prices in Vietnam rose above VND30,000/liter (U.S.$1.23/liter).

“People have no jobs but raw materials prices are still high, transportation costs increase, all other commodities increase in price,” De said. “The people are very poor, [their lives] are very difficult.”

More than 143,000 companies went out of business last year, according to the General Statistics Office, with an average of nearly 400 bankruptcies a day.

“If the government says 8% growth is the highest rate in the past 12 years, that’s a good point. But looking at people’s lives, the difficulties of businesses, looking at the number of businesses that have to close, we understand the downside,” De said.

2023 economic outlook

Even though Vietnam’s gross domestic product grew 8% and total trade value reached a record U.S.$733 billion last year, Nguyen Tri Hieu said the economy still had many problems. The most serious, he said, was the instability of financial markets, with the VN-Index losing as much as 300%, a liquidity crunch as companies struggled to sell bonds and continued weakness in the real estate sector. He said the economy will face a rough ride in the first half of this year before becoming more stable in the second half.

Nguyen Huy Vu said economic growth could be weaker this year because fewer outsourcing orders from the U.S. and Europe will cut the inflow of foreign currency.

With global interest rates rising, Vietnam will be forced to follow suit to keep exchange rates stable, Vu said. Higher borrowing costs will make it difficult for businesses to invest in higher production, he said, and manufacturers will face difficulties.

Trinh Khanh Ly, formerly at the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor and the International Labor Organization in Hanoi, is a specialist in labor law, income inequality, labor export policy and trade unions in Vietnam.

She told RFA the recovery of Vietnam’s outsourcing companies depends on the economic strength of the major markets they export to, Japan, the U.S. and the E.U. 

“These are the markets that, after being greatly affected by COVID, are being heavily affected by the fuel crisis, the war in Ukraine, high inflation and are expected to continue to face many difficulties in 2023,” she said. “Therefore, I think Vietnam should prepare for a worse scenario where the loss of jobs in these enterprises will continue to occur in 2023 and the next few years.”

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

A court under the jurisdiction of Myanmar’s military junta has sentenced 116 Rohingya refugees to between two and five years in prison for traveling without documents after they left camps in Bangladesh and Rakhine state to try to get to Malaysia, sources in Myanmar told Radio Free Asia.

The 57 men, 47 women and 12 children were arrested Dec. 20 from two motorboats near an island off Bogale township in the Ayeyarwady near Myanmar’s southern coast. According to a previous RFA report, at the time of their arrest they were waiting for other boats to take them to shore in Bogale, and they planned to set sail from there to Malaysia.

“The court has given out the prison sentences in two batches,” a lawyer who has been helping the detainees told RFA’s Burmese Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Those who left the refugee camps in Bangladesh got five years while those who left from Rakhine state received two years. He was not sure how many of the detainees came from Bangladesh.

Residents in Bogale told RFA that the authorities plan to send the 12 children to Hnget Aw San Youth Rehabilitation Center and Twante Youth Correctional Center in the Yangon Region while all the adult Rohingya are to be sent to Ayeyarwady’s Pyapon prison.

Some of the detainees are ill and need medical treatment, a volunteer who is helping them told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“Some have fevers. Some are infected with skin diseases. They are also in need of clothes,” the volunteer said.

According to the volunteer, another 100 Rohingya who were arrested in the region’s Pyapon, Kyaitlatt and Daedaye Townships are still awaiting trials. 

Once they serve their terms, authorities will return them to their place of origin, volunteers said.

A total of 237 Rohingya, 129 males and 108 females, serving prison terms in Insein Prison in Yangon Region were released under the military council’s amnesty on January 4, 2023.

A volunteer who is helping Rohingya in the Rakhine state city of Sittwe said family members of convicted Rohingya have difficulties visiting them in prison because they don’t have any documents to prove their citizenship and there are restrictions on their movement.

“When the Rohingya who fled Rakhine State get sent to prison, their family members totally lose contact with them,” the Sittwe volunteer said. 

“Although they are in Rakhine State, they are technically not citizens yet. So they cannot travel in the country,” he said, adding that a select few are wealthy enough to bribe the right officials to visit their family members. “But 99 out of 100 detained Rohingya are very poor and cannot afford that.”

RFA records show that between December 2021 and Jan. 6, 2023, a total of 1,816 Rohingya who fled refugee camps in Rakhine State and Bangladesh have been arrested in Myanmar and 387 of them got prison sentences of two to five years.

Advocates for the refugees say that they should be returned to their places of origin instead of being charged as criminals.

More than 740,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine state following a military crackdown on the ethnic minority Muslim group that started five years ago and live in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Of the more than 600,000 that remained around 125,000 are living in camps in Rakhine.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Myanmar’s junta met with three armed ethnic organizations over the weekend as part of a wider campaign to enlist support for an upcoming general election dismissed by democracy watchdogs as a military ploy to maintain power.

Leaders from the United Wa State Party, National Democratic Alliance Army, and Shan State Progressive Party – three rebel groups that have largely remained neutral in the country’s post-coup fray – met with officials from the military regime for three days of talks ending Saturday in the capital Naypyidaw.

The three groups based in Shan state, near northeastern Myanmar’s border with China, discussed their “political needs” and “building a Union based on democracy and the federal system” with the junta, according to a report by the official Global New Light of Myanmar. 

Agence France-Presse quoted a spokesperson for the SSPP as saying that the military “asked us to let them hold free and fair elections in our area” and that the group “will not oppose” junta-led polls there this year.

Democracy activists and Western governments have dismissed the likelihood of the junta’s election – for which no date has been set – being free or fair. The military seized power from Myanmar’s democratically elected National League for Democracy government in a February 2021 coup and accused it of election fraud, although it has yet to present evidence of its claims. Political analysts say the junta intends to use a ballot to install a pro-military government.

While the junta has touted the weekend talks as a win, the three ethnic armies have been mostly aligned with the military and a peace process championed by the previous junta in 2011. While the trio have been involved in Myanmar’s decades-long conflict, they are not currently at war with the military and have even participated in peace negotiations and signed ceasefires with the government. Last month, the junta also met with five other smaller ethnic armies, who later issued a statement expressing support for the planned elections.

Other groups have condemned the ouster of the NLD and offered assistance and safe haven to anti-junta armed forces, including the People’s Defense Force paramilitary group.

Wanting a seat at the table

Last year, Myanmar’s four most powerful armed ethnic groups – the Kachin Independence Organisation, the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Progressive Party and the Chin National Front – rejected an olive branch from the junta, saying there can be no peace talks until the military regime allows the country’s shadow government and the PDF to take a seat at the table. They said that by not offering all stakeholders the chance to participate, the junta showed it is unwilling to meet halfway.

The junta has rejected requests from ethnic leaders and the international community to let the NUG and PDF participate in the talks. Military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly said that the junta will not talk with “terrorists,” and vowed to continue to crack down on the groups.

In addition to the four strongest armies, the other ethnic rebel groups to reject the invitation were the All Burma Students Democratic Front and the Lahu Democratic Union — two of the 10 groups that have signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government since 2015.

The United Wa State Party, the Shan State Progressive Party, and the National Democratic Alliance Army have agreed to join peace negotiations. So have the Arakan State Liberation Party, the Shan State Rehabilitation Council, the Karen National Peace Council, the Democratic Karen Army, the New Mon State Party and the Pa-O National Liberation Organization — all of which are members of the Peace Process Steering Team of Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement signatories.

The 10 groups that signed the NCA have suggested that the deal remains in place, despite an already flailing peace process that was all but destroyed by the coup. Previously, all 10 said they would not pursue talks with the military, which they view as having stolen power from the country’s democratically elected government.

Chinese mediation

The meeting between the United Wa State Party, National Democratic Alliance Army, and Shan State Progressive Party and the junta over the weekend came a week after China’s new special envoy to Myanmar, Deng Xijun, met with Min Aung Hlaing. 

The two discussed matters including Myanmar’s development, the status of peace talks with ethnic armed groups, China’s investment in the development of Myanmar, cooperation and increasing relations between the two countries, according to an official announcement following their Dec. 29 meeting.

Deng had met with the three ethnic armies across the border in China’s Yunnan province prior to his trip to Naypyidaw.

Thein Tun Oo, the executive director of Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers, told RFA Burmese that China’s mediation is key to achieving peace with the ethnic groups.

“China’s mediation and political support is necessary to some extent in solving the issues of the ethnic armed forces, especially those who operate in the border areas between China and Myanmar,” he said. “Negotiation between China and Myanmar and China and these [groups] is essential.”

SSPP spokesperson Lieutenant Col. Sai Su told RFA amid the weekend talks that the group’s visit to Naypyidaw was “unrelated” to the Chinese special envoy, although he acknowledged that Deng “requested us to help stop the fighting that is happening across the country” when he met with them in Yunnan. Sai Su said the ethnic armies said that they alone could not end the violence and that the junta “must play a part.”

Reviewing cross-border relations

China and Russia have maintained ties with the military regime in the aftermath of the coup while other nations have sanctioned the junta or reduced diplomatic ties in response to its subsequent crackdown on dissent.

But political analyst Than Soe Naing suggested that China sent its special envoy to Myanmar to better understand the latter’s affairs and whether it needs to change its policy amid rising international pressure on the junta.

“The ‘Spring Revolution’ led by NUG is gaining momentum. On the other hand, the international pressure has increased quite a lot on the junta,” he said. “I assume that China sent the new envoy to learn if it needs to change its policy towards Myanmar in such a situation.”

On Dec. 21, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution that urges Myanmar’s military to stop the violence in Myanmar as soon as possible and to release all political prisoners, including deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – 2023, which will support Myanmar’s democratic forces, was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Dec. 23.

Other analysts noted that with hundreds of clashes having taken place along the China-Myanmar economic corridor since the coup, China appears concerned that continued instability could affect its investments in the country.

“China seems to understand that … it is no longer possible for the Myanmar military regime to handle political situations in the same way as before,” said political analyst Sai Kyi Zin Soe.

“As a neighboring country, the stability of Myanmar’s affairs may seriously impact its [investments]. Additionally, they seem to be aware that the changes in Myanmar’s relations with western countries may affect China’s interests more or less.”

According to ISP-Myanmar, the value of foreign investment in Myanmar totaled more than U.S. $4 billion from February 2021 to April 2022, more than two-thirds of which was Chinese.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.