Vietnam on a roll

If Filipinos want to indulge their masochistic sentiments and enjoy a long cry, they only have to look at Vietnam. In the '50s, in Asia, the Philippines was second only to Japan in economic and development potential. Even then, alarm bells should already have sounded for us. Japan, after all, was decimated by two atomic bombs. But we calmed ourselves then: the Philippines, too, was destroyed by a world war.

Today, we have, in a very real sense, been overtaken once more. And again by another war-torn country. Shall we console ourselves as we did before, look for excuses, and blame a rapacious dictatorship for our inability to get ahead? I did not hear the Vietnamese people officially blaming anybody--not the war, not the French, not the Americans, not the Vietcong, not the US-installed government in the South, nobody. They applied themselves to the task of picking up the pieces of a broken land and a divided people, decided to forgo the usual breast-beating and grudge-bearing, and forged today's Vietnamese miracle.

The rest of Indochina is running very close behind. The Laotians and Cambodians, no doubt inspired by the Vietnamese, are moving fast to catch up. Very soon, all of them will overtake hapless, divided, undisciplined, politicized, personalistic us.

This piece was written more than a decade ago. And yes, we have been overtaken.

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Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 19 April 1995

Once a world pariah, Vietnam is fast moving up the Asian trade totem pole. And guess which of the countries in the region Vietnam will soon overtake, given its new export energy.

Listen to these amazing statistics of 1995 first-quarter performance from the new boy on the world trade bloc. In the first three months of this year alone, Vietnam exported an estimated $940-million worth of goods, narrowing its quarterly trade deficit to only $85 million. Vietnam's total trade shortfall in 1994 was $900 million.

Clothing and textile exports in the first quarter of 1995 almost doubled from the same period in 1994. Coal exports rose by 56 percent and rice exports by 44 percent.

The value of Vietnam's industrial output increased by 12 percent during the first quarter of 1995, compared to the same period in 1994.

The country's most productive cities in the first three months of the year were Hanoi and Haiphong, the north's largest cities. Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, showed only modest but continuing gains.

Filipino manufacturers who want to know which Vietnamese exports are growing may take a hint from the manufactured goods with the highest increases in volume of output--light bulbs, animal feeds, textiles, bricks, cement. Output volumes for chemical fertilizers, canned vegetables, and frozen seafood decreased.

Now, these statistics would come to nothing unless we realize that, until less than three years ago, Vietnam as an exporter of acceptable goods was not even being considered by international markets.

For one, there was the active American campaign to keep Vietnamese trade on a tight embargo. For another, Vietnamese products were considered good only for domestic consumption.

Given the evidence of the above statistics, however, Vietnam appears to have leapfrogged its way to exporter status in world markets in the short space of three years. Exports worth $940 million in three months, even as an estimate, are nothing to look down on. In fact, for countries like the Philippines, which hopes to do well in the same race, Vietnam's figures should constitute a critical wake-up call.

Unless we decide we want to be an island unto ourselves--a seeming impossibility in a world that has become so small--the rest of 1995 should be, for the Philippines, serious catch-up time.

Do we want to be left behind again, another time?

-- NBT