HANOI, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's economy is estimated to lose some 37 billion U.S. dollars due to the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of this year, according to an official on Sunday.
Nguyen Thanh Phong, deputy head of the Economic Commission under the Communist Party of Vietnam's Central Committee, made the remarks at a forum discussing economic recovery measures held Sunday in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
If it was not for the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's economy could have grown 7 percent per year in the past two years, Phong said. However, in fact, it expanded 2.91 percent in 2020 and is expected to grow 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, export, domestic consumption and digital transformation, the official said.
Vietnam posted a modest gross domestic product growth 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 an economic growth rate of between 6 and 6.5 percent in 2022 under a plan decided recently by its top legislature. Enditem
