Helping Vietnam's Global Integration Through Trade

Start & End Date: 2017-2018

Country/Countries: Vietnam

Multilateral Institution(s) Involved: World Bank

At the time of the World Bank Group's engagement, the Government of Vietnam was evaluating the economic gains from deepening regional trade integration under potential free trade agreements. Major new agreements under negotiation included the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP or TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The TPP was originally negotiated with 12 economies in America, Asia, and the Australian continent

The Umbrella Facility for Trade supported a comprehensive analysis of the impacts of joining CPTPP to assess winners and losers within the country. The study used innovative economic modeling (global dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model (CGE)) linked with a top down microsimulation model relying on Vietnamese Household Living Standard Surveys, and found that the distribution of gains from trade will not be equally shared by all segments of the population. Other complementary assistance included a legal gap assessment for Vietnam’s implementation of CP-TPP, and technical assistance for Investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) capacity enhancement. Under such circumstances, analyzing the distributional consequences of the Free-Trade Agreements (FTAs) opened the policy discussion towards the implementation of policies to ameliorate the possible negative consequences of FTAs on specific segments of the population that might be most adversely affected.

On February 2018, the team presented the final findings of the impact assessment to the National Community Investment Fund (NCIF) and other government agencies. The Hanoi World Bank team was informed subsequently that the findings were reported at a top meeting comprising country authorities, as one of the third party’s analytical sources, for them to decide whether or not Vietnam would sign the CP-TPP.