A Soaring Seven Months for Services

A Soaring Seven Months for Services

The service sector has achieved impressive results since early this year. For example, the post and telecommunication service earned revenues of VND14,120 billion (US$899.363 million) in seven months, up by 16.2 per cent. This was driven by an increase of 27.8 per cent in the number of telephone subscribers and 58 per cent in the number of Internet subscribers.

The tourism service received 1.656 million foreign visitors, up by 34.9 per cent against that of the same period last year thanks to a strong development in major markets. The transportation service has seen a record high growth rate with the aviation service seeing an increase of 56.3 per cent in terms of the number of passengers. The domestic market continues to be expanded with total retail sales of goods and services up by 17.9 per cent against one year earlier, a record high compared with recent years. The labour market continued to broaden.

The volume of overseas exchange remittance reached more than US$1 billion and authorised agencies predict that this will reach US$3 billion this year, higher than the US$2.6 billion in 2003. The outstanding achievements of the financial and banking service have helped it maintain a stable foreign exchange rate and complete its budget revenue and expenditure tasks.

Thanks to these achievements, services have made significant contributions to the whole country’s economic growth in the first half of the year. In terms of the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP), the services’ GDP growth rate is seven per cent more than the rate of the whole economy. This figure is also higher than the 6.38 per cent in the first half of 2003. Some services gaining a high GDP growth rate include the financial and banking service with 10.1 per cent, trade with eight per cent, and science and technology with 7.7 per cent.

Transport and communication, education and training, public health and social relief, cultural and sports services have also posted growth rates of more than seven per cent. As a result, services have contributed 2.8 percentage points to the whole economy, with the industrial and construction sectors providing 3.8 percentage points and agriculture, fisheries and forestry, 0.4 percentage points.

• H.C