Vietnam seeks IMF help to measure its informal sector

He made the request Tuesday morning at a reception he hosted for the chief representative of the IMF in Vietnam, Jonathan Dunn, in Hanoi. He thanked the IMF and called on it to continue making recommendations to Vietnam on monetary policy amid the "complex" international developments.

Dunn said the IMF could help Vietnam measure national output better since its official statistics related to GDP do not correctly reflect the real gross domestic output.

The structure of Vietnam’s economy has changed much over the years, but some figures are only updated once every decade, with the last update done in 2012, he pointed out.

Once they are updated, there would be a significant change to the country’s nominal GDP, he said.

The government has approved a scheme by the Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO) to document the informal economy to more accurately reflect GDP.

The GSO is scheduled to begin it in 2019 and collect data in 2020, and publish preliminary and final results every quarter.

The GSO describes the informal economy as underground activities aimed at evading tax, illegal activities, informal activities, production for self-consumption, and other undocumented activities.

According to a Fulbright study last year the informal economy accounted for 25-30 percent of the country’s GDP, equivalent to US$55-60 billion.