Vietnam targets growth surge, hi-tech shift

Rising status: A street vendor pushes her bicycle past an art gallery in Hanoi. The country is targeting to raise its profile beyond a low-cost labour destination to a centre for science and technology. ─ AFP

HANOI: Having sidestepped the worst of the coronavirus pandemic so far, Vietnam aims to rev up its economy over the next five years, trusting on its custom-tooled mix of free trade deals, privatisation and tight Covid-19 curbs.

Armed with a raft of free trade deals envied by regional peers and increasingly luring factories away from China, the ruling Communist Party has formally approved ambitions to raise growth beyond an annual 6% in the pre-pandemic era to 6.5%-7.0% for the 2021-2025 period.