Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — — Vietnam’s property market has been in «deep trouble» for years, a prominent economist warned Friday, pointing to the country’s «severe» shortage of land and high rents.
The Ho Chi Nha Institute’s chairman, Nguyen Phuong Nha, said Vietnam’s «excessive property prices» could cause the country to crash and that the country could also become «a bubble in the sky.»
«In a bubble, prices rise,» he said in a speech to mark the institute’s 20th anniversary.
«It is an accumulation of value that makes a bubble grow, and it is possible to see in Vietnam this accumulation of capital in land and capital that has led to an excessive property price.
That is a bubble.
The price of land is extremely high, and the price of capital is extremely low.»
The Ho Chmin National University economist, who has served on the institute since 1994, said that Vietnam’s capital stock is currently worth more than US$400 billion, compared to US$20 billion for the United States.
The country has about 12 million people, most of whom are in rural areas.
The country’s population of 5.7 million is about one-third the size of Germany.
The government has set a goal of bringing the country back to normalcy by 2020.
But the country has a long way to go.
According to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Ho Chi Pha National University, just 6 percent of Vietnamese citizens say they would like to see the country go back to its pre-war level of prosperity.