HANOI, Sept 15 (Askume) – Vietnam’s economic growth in 2024 may be 0.15% lower than previously forecast due to the impact of Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s strongest storm this year, Vietnam’s Planning and Investment Minister Nguyen Chi Dung said.
The typhoon that hit Vietnam on Saturday caused severe damage to infrastructure and factories, causing losses to the country of about 40 trillion dong ($1.63 billion), the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) quoted a minister at a government meeting as saying.
“The growth rate of the whole country and many regions is expected to slow down in the last six months of this year,” VNA quoted Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as saying.
“Compared with the situation without Typhoon Yagi, GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters may decline by 0.35% and 0.22%, respectively,” he said.
The ministry predicted in July that Vietnam’s economy could grow by 7% this year.
The Southeast Asian country is grappling with the effects of Typhoon Yagi, which has left at least 281 people dead and 67 missing as of Sunday morning, according to data from Vietnam’s disaster relief agency.
According to the agency, floods submerged 190,000 hectares (469,500 acres) of rice fields, 48,000 hectares of cash crops such as maize and cassava and damaged about 232,000 houses in northern Vietnam.
Dung said Haiphong city, which has several industrial parks, suffered about VND11 trillion ($448.43 million) in damages from the storm.
In a separate statement issued by the government, Vietnam said it was trying to control inflation and achieve its gross domestic product growth target of about 7% this year despite being hit by Typhoon Yagi.
(1 USD = 24,530.0000 Dong)
