پویایی تورم و انتقال سیاست پولی در ویتنام و در حال پیدایش در آسیا

This paper provides an overview of inflation developments in Vietnam in the years following the doi moi reforms, and uses empirical analysis to answer two key questions: (i) what are the key drivers of inflation in Vietnam, and what role does monetary policy play? and (ii) why has inflation in Vietnam been persistently higher than in most other emerging market economies in the region? It focuses on understanding the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Vietnam, and in understanding the extent to which monetary policy can explain why inflation in Vietnam has been higher than in other Asian emerging markets over the past decade.

Vietnam has been in transition from a centrally planned to a ‘socialist oriented market economy’ since the introduction of the doi moi economic reforms in 1986. In the early-to-mid 1990s, liberalization measures resulted in rapidly expanding exports and high economic growth, with real GDP growth averaging 9 percent per year. Growth slowed in the late 1990s but the momentum picked up again, with real GDP growth rising more-or-less steadily and reaching a high of 8.5 percent in 2007. Since then, growth has slowed down, reaching 5.0 percent in 2012, largely as a result of tighter monetary and fiscal policies and spillovers from the global economic crisis ( World Bank, 2012). At the same time inflation fell sharply through the course of 2012, with CPI inflation falling from 18.1 percent at end-2011 to 6.8 percent at end-2012, and core inflation falling from 14.3 percent to 9.6 percent over the same period. Despite the deceleration in inflation, Vietnam has suffered from higher and more volatile inflation compared to most emerging Asian economies since mid-2007 (Fig. 1). This in turn is a reflection of weaknesses in the macroeconomic policy framework. In particular, monetary policy in Vietnam has been criticized for lack of transparency and predictability, and for following multiple – and at times conflicting – objectives (International Monetary Fund, 2010 and Moody's Investor Service, 2011). In practice, four key objectives have been guiding monetary policy in Vietnam in the recent past, namely promoting economic growth, fighting inflation, stabilizing the exchange rate, and preserving the stability of the financial system. There is also prevalent use of caps on interest rates and controls on credit.Although the monetary policy framework in Vietnam has been criticized by various (internal and external) observers, empirical work to see how the monetary policy transmission mechanism operates in practice and affects inflation has been relatively limited to date. Moreover, it has at times provided conflicting results and policy conclusions. This paper aims to make a contribution in this area. Section 2 provides an overview of inflation developments in Vietnam in the years following the doi moi reforms. This is followed by a brief review of the existing empirical literature on inflation in Vietnam in Section 3. Section 4 presents a very simple theoretical model of inflation, and Section 5 presents and discusses the empirical results obtained from an econometric analysis of the data. The empirical analysis seeks to answer two key questions: (i) what are the key drivers of inflation in Vietnam, and what role does monetary policy play? and (ii) why has inflation in Vietnam been persistently higher than in most other emerging market economies in the region? The final section presents the conclusions and discusses the policy implications of the empirical analysis presented in this paper.

The empirical analysis in this paper sought to answer three key questions: (i) what are the key drivers of inflation in Vietnam, and what role does monetary policy play? (ii) why has inflation in Vietnam been persistently higher than in most other emerging market economies in the region? and (iii) is there a trade-off between inflation and growth? Our empirical results suggest that the key drivers of inflation in the short-run are movements in the nominal effective exchange rate. Credit growth has a significant positive impact on inflation over a medium-term horizon of 2–10 quarters, while positive shocks to real GDP growth tend to generate inflationary pressures after 4 quarters, with the impact lasting for the subsequent 5 quarters. Interest rate shocks tend to have a significant impact on GDP growth and on growth in credit to the economy over the short- to medium-term. Moreover, whereas there appears to be a strong and significant relationship in Vietnam between inflation and growth of total credit to the economy, this is not the case for inflation and growth of the money supply (as measured by M2). Counter-intuitively, the response of inflation to a rise in the nominal interest rate appears to be significant only in the first two quarters, and is positive. This could be because the State Bank of Vietnam has, to date, been rather passive instead of forward-looking in responding to inflation. Our econometric analysis further confirms that Vietnam shows a much higher degree of persistence in inflation than in other emerging market Asian economies. More specifically, they suggest that a one percentage point of past inflation is associated with an inflation increase of about 0.87 in the current period in Vietnam – 0.51 percentage points higher than our sample average. This may reflect sluggish adjustment of inflationary expectations, and/or monetary policy that is more accommodative in Vietnam compared to the other countries. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that lagged GDP growth, and lagged movements of the nominal effective exchange rate, had an important impact on headline inflation in Vietnam, unlike in the other countries in the region, over the sample period 2004Q1–2012Q2. Foreign inflation, as proxied by movements in the import price deflator, also seems to have a somewhat stronger impact in Vietnam compared with other emerging market economies in Asia. An important finding from our analysis is that interest rates in Vietnam do not seem to have a significant impact on headline inflation (as opposed to growth), neither in the short- term nor in the medium-term; in this sense, it can be concluded that the monetary policy transmission mechanism is weak in Vietnam. Several measures can be taken if the authorities wish to make the interest rate a more effective tool for combating inflation. Three specific recommendations can be made in this regard: • First, the State Bank and Vietnam should be given a clear mandate and greater autonomy to pursue price stability as its primary policy objective. The Law on the State Bank of Vietnam, passed in June 2010, did not give it such a clear mandate, stating in Paragraph 1 of Article 4 that “The operations of the State Bank shall aim at stabilizing the currency value; ensure the safety of banking activities and the system of credit institutions; ensure the safety and efficiency of national payment system; facilitate the socio-economic development in a manner consistent with the socialist orientation.” • Second, use of administrative controls on interest rates and on credit allocation and growth should be faded away, with interest rates allowed to be more market-determined over time. • Third, it would also be useful to establish an interest rate corridor, incorporating both a lending rate and a deposit rate, as an important tool of monetary policy; the ‘corridor’ introduced in May 2008, comprised of the refinancing rate and the discount rate, does not create a true corridor for the interbank interest rate since both are, in effect, lending rates. Here it is relevant to note that Mohanty and Turner (2008) conclude that the introduction of a new liquidity management framework in India in 2004, which established a corridor for the movement of the daily interbank rate, resulted in a significant improvement in the Reserve Bank of India's control over market interest rates.