Vietnam’s middle-class has fastest growth rate in Asia: survey
Monday, July 14, 2014, 11:52 GMT+7
Vietnam is enjoying the fastest growing middle-class in the Asia-Pacific region with over two million citizens joining it annually, a recent survey shows.
“This is an important driving force that sustainably promotes domestic economic growth," Glenn Maguire, chief economist of ANZ in the region, said in the survey released on Friday.
The survey, jointly conducted by Australia-New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and Australian market research firm Roy Morgan earlier this year, aims at building up a monthly consumer confidence index for each country in the region.
The first of its kind to reflect the confidence index of Vietnamese consumers, it reviewed the evolution in the consumer’s confidence via many other factors in which personal spending is becoming an important factor to contribute to the stability of growth.
In terms of personal finances, 48 percent of Vietnamese people surveyed said they expect their family financial situation would get better in the next year, while only 8 percent said their financial situation would worsen within the year.
The Vietnamese consumer demographic differs from that of other countries as the majority are young and tech-savvy, said Glenn Maguire. Therefore, businesses that wish to reach consumers should have an updated index of the local consumers' confidence.
One of the advantages of the local economy is that 1/3 of the population of Vietnam, which is the 4th most populous country in Asia with over 90 million people, is under the age of 20. This is a solid foundation for a strong development of individual consumer segments in the future, said Tareq Muhmood, General Director of ANZ Vietnam.
"Along with the annual increase in per capita income of about 10 percent in Vietnam, we believe that economic growth will go towards rebalancing, which will result in increasing investment in the local economy, making Vietnam less dependent on exports in the next 10 years," Muhmood said.
The index, conducted monthly on consumers in many provinces and cities in Vietnam, also provides an overview of the differences in psychological and consumer trends between large and small cities.
ANZ and Roy Morgan have done consumer confidence indices in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, China and Vietnam and plan to continue to conduct them in five other Asian countries over the next few months.
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In late January of this year, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reported that the middle and affluent class in Vietnam will double in size between 2014 and 2020 from 12 million to 33 million, adding that those consumers whose income is from VND15 million (US$714) or more a month are spreading out to other provinces and cities. By 2020, with an average per capita income of $3,400 per year, the population of Vietnam’s middle and affluent class will be two-thirds the size of that in Thailand. The report, conducted by the BCG Center for Consumer and Customer Insight in 2013, surveyed more than 3,000 urban consumers in Vietnam and Myanmar. The analysis provides a granular forecast of consumption, by product category, in both countries. |
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