ANZ

Commentary

There are some things in life which are always a fixed time in the future: the big joke about nuclear fusion is that it is 30 years away – and it was 30 years away back in 1970. Similar comments have been made about Vietnam’s economic potential: despite being hailed by many as the next China for economic growth, with its population of nearly 100 million people, and high levels of education and entrepreneurship, it has remained one of the more difficult places to do business and manage cash.

• This call showed that the economy has made progress. Participants generally have businesses which are profitable and generating cash, and obtaining and remitting hard currency is not the major challenge it used to be. However, there is a lot of bureaucracy to be complied with, and it is not plain sailing.
• Cash repatriation and trapped cash are issues. The only truly viable way of extracting cash from the country is via dividends – this means cash accumulates until the financial year has been closed, audited, and tax paid.
• One participant has been involved in a situation where cash was repatriated via a prepayment of intercompany royalties – this required approval from the central bank.
• Intercompany loans out of the country are