The Vietnamese economy is estimated to suffer a US$37 billion loss in potential growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of this year, a senior official said on Sunday.

Nguyen Thanh Phong, deputy head of the Party Central Committee’s Economic Commission, made the remarks at a forum discussing economic recovery measures held in Hanoi on Sunday.

If it was not for the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s economy could have grown around seven percent per year over the past two years, Phong said. 

However, it expanded a mere 2.91 percent in 2020 and is expected to expand just 2.5 percent in 2021.

To weather the pandemic’s impact, it is necessary to have comprehensive recovery solutions with four growth drivers namely investment, exports, domestic consumption, and digital transformation, the official said.

Vietnam posted a modest gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 1.42 percent in the first nine months of this year due to severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to its General Statistics Office. 

The country will strive to achieve economic growth of six to 6.5 percent in 2022 under a plan ratified recently by the legislature.

Vietnam has documented 1,309,092 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first struck it early last year, with 1,006,460 recoveries and 26,260 deaths.

More than 73 million of the country’s 98 million people have received at least one dose while over 54 million are now fully immunized.

The Ministry of Health recorded 14,314 new coronavirus infections and 199 virus-related deaths on Sunday.

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