HANOI: Vietnam's economy dipped slightly in the third quarter year-on-year, data showed Thursday, but analysts say the communist country will remain one of Southeast Asia's star performers.
GDP growth in the three months to September hit 6.4 percent, down from 6.81 percent in the same period in 2015, the Government Statistics Office said in a statement.
Vietnam has become a magnet for private investment in the region, especially in the manufacturing and consumer sectors, driven in part by a rapidly growing middle class with money to burn.
But cumbersome state enterprises, banking scandals and growing public debt have pegged back the economy.
Third quarter growth rose from 5.78 percent in the previous quarter and 5.48 in the first, official data said, as foreign investment and exports rose and agriculture recovered after a devastating drought.
Analysts still view Vietnam as a bright spot in the region.
Neighbouring Thailand, once the star of Southeast Asia, has by contrast seen its economy sputter under a military junta.
"We expect Vietnam to remain a growth outperformer, bucking regional weakness in trade," Eugenia Victorino, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore told Bloomberg News.
"Reforms are slowly instituted which should prop up potential growth further in the medium term."
Vietnam has promised to privatise its bloated state-owned sector, and last month announced it would divest its majority stakes from leading government-owned brewers Sabeco and Habeco.
Lower than expected growth rates clocked in the first half of this year were blamed on a crippling drought that hammered Vietnam's rice and coffee farmers.
Mass fish deaths blamed on an industrial accident along the coast that devastated key fishing communities also dented progress.
The country has set a GDP growth target of between 6.5 and seven percent by the end of 2016.
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