Available data suggest the continued recovery of domestic economic activities, with industrial production growing by 8.5 percent year on year and a broad improvement in manufacturing despite the surge of new COVID-19 cases to over 100,000 infections per day at the end of February.
Retail sales grew by an estimated 3.1 percent in February. The budget balance saw a 1.1 billion USD surplus in February as revenue performance remained strong.
Expenditures increased thanks to improved disbursement of public investment. WB experts also noted that Vietnamese authorities should encourage exporters to seek new markets and develop new products through global value chains and existing free trade agreements to strengthen export resilience.
