Majority of businesses optimistic about production prospects ahead

Announcing the results of the survey in Hanoi on September 29, the GSO noted that 32.2% of manufacturing and processing firms rated their production and business prospects better in the third quarter of the year in comparison to the second quarter. Meanwhile,  35.9% of respondents said that they believed the situation was stable and 31.9% rated the situation as difficult.

Despite just going through a difficult patch, the majority of businesses expressed their upbeat about the market’s recovery and the purchasing power ahead in the fourth quarter of the year. As such, 81% of respondents answered that market trends would be either better or stable moving forward, while 19% of respondents forecast that the situation would prove to be more challenging.

The GSO also used the occasion to report that in September, only 10,300 businesses had registered for operation, pouring in a total of VND203 trillion in investment capital, generating 83,000 jobs in the process. These figures represent drops of 23.1%, 29.6%, and 13.8%, respectively, in comparison to the figures from August.

Overall, during the course of the first nine months of the year, authorities licensed approximately 99,000 new businesses with a total registered capital of VND1.43 quadrillion, down by 3.2% in terms of the number of businesses, but up 10.7% in registered capital from the previous year. In addition, 34,600 enterprises also resumed operations, an annual increase of 25.5%.

The GSO also announced that the national economy is anticipated to grow by 2.62% in the third quarter, which is much higher than the Q2 figure (0.39%) but lower than the Q1 figure (3.68%). As a result, the nine-month GDP growth is estimated at 2.12%, representing a 10-year record low but considered a success given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.