' UNI,rVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES ·rt · HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE ·; VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIET NAM- THE NETHERLANDS PROJECT FOR M. ON DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS OF DOMESTIC SAVINGS IN ASEAN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN THE PERIOD 1986-2000, THE CASE OF VIET NAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT ' ~, Academic Supervisor: Dr. NGUYEN TRQNG HOAI HOCHIMINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2003 CERTIFICATION "I ,certifY that the substance of this dissertation has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degree. I certifY that to the best of my knowledge any help received in preparing this dissertation, and all source used, have been acknowledgement in this thesis." Ph~;tm Dinh Long Date: November 51\ 2003 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all teachers and the st~ff in Viet Nam - the Netherlands Project for M.
on Development Economics, especially Mr. Tran Yo Hung Son, Mr. Nguyen Huu Dung and Ms. Tran Thi Ben.
They have created an excellent environment for our study. Many thanks are also released to Ms. Dinh Anh Nguyet, the project secretary and Ms. Dang Kim Chi, the project librarian for their assistance during the whole course.
I am grateful to Dr. Karel Jansen, Dr. Youdi Schipper and Dr. Joost Buurman for their comments on the thesis proposal.
Especially, I am indebted to the knowledge got from Dr. Karel Jansen in the field Money and Banking, his useful and interesting lecture as well as works relating to finance dropped a hint for me to follow this research. ,I am so fortunate to be guided by Dr. Nguyen Trang Hoai.
His deep understanding on Econometrics and Savings is invaluable for my thesis. His enthusiasm and encouragement made me more confident in the difficult times. I hope my result is not a disappointment to him. I would like to thank all my classmates, friends and colleagues at Labor and social · Affairs School HCM city for their support in my study process.
Last but not least, God bless my parents and lovely relatives. There is no word to reveal my love to them. I hope they would consider this thesis as one of worthy gifts from me. ABSTRACT A savings rate of a country has been considered as one of the most crucial sources for capital formation that can be translated to improve its ec~nomic growth rate.
For the past decades, selected ASEAN developing countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and VietNam) have attained miracle in economic development. They are all in the process of regional integration with greater overall openness of economies and an ongoing liberalization of their finance, trade and investment regime. However, from the 1997 financial crisis and its consequences for ASEAN countries' economies, one of the lessons withdrawn is that these countries passively depended much on foreign capital. Therefore, realizing the determinants of domestic savings in these countries is necessary to mobilize and well use the available resource for high and sustainable economic growth.
Basing on the integrated theory of savings and previous empirical works, this study also found income growth, demographics, financial liberalization and financial development are main factors explain for the domestic savings in Southeast Asian countries. The regression result gave out the positive impacts of income growth on domestic savings in VietNam and Indonesia; the positive effects of financial development on domestic savings in Viet Nam and Malaysia. Furthermore, the negative impacts of age dependency ratio and real interest rate on domestic savings are revealed in all five countries. In order to mobilize domestic savings for modernization and industrialization, Vietnamese government should try to stabilize socio-economic problems, control inflation, reform state- owned enterprises and encourage the development of private sectors, continue to improve the effectiveness of financial and banking sectors as well as birth-control and family pla'nning programme.
ABBREVIATIONS ADB: Asian Development Bank A SEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nation DEP: Age Dependency Ratio FDI: Foreign Direct Investment GOP: Gross Domestic Product GDS: Gross Domestic Savings GSO: General Statistics Office IMF: International Monetary Fund ;:-;, M2: Broad Money ODA: Official Development Assistance RIR: Real Interest Rate USD: United State Dollar VND: VietNam Dong WDI: World Development Indicators ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .11 LIST OF TABLES. V LIST OF FIGURES. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY. DATA AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
STRUCTURE OF THESIS. 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. SELECTIVE THEORIES OF SAVINGS. KEYNESIAN SAVINGS FUNCTION.
THE PERMANENT INCOME HYPOTHESIS. THE LIFE CYCLE HYPOTHESIS. THE McKINNON- SHAW'S FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION. INTEGRATED SAVINGS THEORY.
EMPERICAL STUDIES OF DETERMINANTS OF SAVINGS. INCOME AND ECONOMIC GROWTH. REAL INTEREST RATE .5 THE STUDY OF VIETNAM INSTITUTE OF FINANCE. 29 CHAPTER 3: DETERMINANTS OF DOMESTIC SAVINGS IN ASEAN COUNTRIES: AN OVERVIEW.
SIMILARITIES OF THE FIVE ASEAN COUNTRIES. GROWTH, DEMOGRAPHICS AND FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION. A SEAN ECONOMIC GROWTH. ASEAN POPULATION BOOM, HIGH DEPENDENCY RA TJO.
FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION IN ASEAN COUNTRIES. SITUATION AND POLICIES ENCOURAGING SAVINGS IN VIETNAM. OVERVIEW OF ECONOMY AND ACCUMULATION BEFORE 1988. STABILIZATION, REFORM AND CONSOLIDATION AFTER 1988.
IMPACTS OF ECONOMIC REFORM ON SA VINGS. 52 CHAPTER 4: DETERMINANTS OF DOMESTIC SAVINGS IN ASEAN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, THE CASE OF VIET NAM. MODEL SPECIFICATION AND ESTIMATION METHOD. 68 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
CONCLUSIONS OF THE THESIS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY. 77 APPENDIX 1: DATA SET (0/o). 78 APPENDIX 2: DESCRIPTIONS OF HYPOTHESES TESTING.
79 APPENDIX 3: REGRESSION RESUL TS .84 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 GDP Growth Rates in Selected Asean Developing Countries 32 Table 3.2 The Size of Population, 1975 and 1998 33 Table 3.3 Average Population Growth per Annum during 1980-1997 34 Table 3.4 Public Savings and GovernmenJ Compensation for Losses(%) 43 Table 3.5 Investment and Saving (% GDP), 1990-2000 45 Table 3.6 Savings Portfolio by Vietnamese Households 1992-93 and 1997-98 48 Table 3.7 Structure of Invested Capital, 1986 - 2000 (Billion VND) .8 Capital Mobilization of Banking Sector (Billion VND) 51 Table 4.1 Data Matrix 57 Table 4.2 Financial Deeping, End-1997 (%) 71 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Schematic Life-Cycle Profiles of Earnings and Consumption 11 Figure 2.2 Savings and Investment under Interest Rate Ceilings 16 Figure 3.1 ASEAN GDP Growth Rate Per Capita during 1986-2000 35 Figure 3.2 Economic Growth and Inflation during 1990- 2000 44 Figure 3.3 Government Savings in the Period 1986- 2000 47 Figure 3.4 Saving Trend of VietNam Compared with Asean-4 Countries 54 v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. PROBLEM STATEMENT A main problem in economic development theory is how to increase the resources available for capital formation, or how to control consumption and increase savings (Jansen 1990, p. The allocation of resources between present and future consumption (savings) is one of the most fundamental economic choices facing any economy. This choice affects not only the rate of economic growth a country can enjoy, but also the standards of living for future generations jet unborn (Gillis, Perkins, Roemer and Snodgrass I 996, p.
Traditional development theories have put much emphasis on the importance of savings in determining economic growth rate in developing countries. According to Jansen (1990), the resources available for investment and economic growth in any country can be increased through more domestic savings or through a larger capital inflqw from abroad. Although many developing countries relied heavily on foreign savings as a source of investment finance, the rise in investment ratios was accompanied by a- roughly commensurate increa~e in the share of gross domestic savings in GOP (Gillis, , Perkins, Roemer and Snodgrass I 996, p. The high ratios of domestic savings and investment are one of the striking features of East Asian and Southeast Asian economies.
ln reality, these high ratios have been reliable foundation for the higher economic growth rate of these countries (Le et all2002, p. In general, there are many evidences showing the same trend in which domestic savings and economic growth rates go in the same direction. Basing on this, many governments in developing countries attempt to raise savings rate in order to achieve high and sustainable growth rates. Therefore, it would be necessary to deeply understand what determine ' domestic savings so that policy makers can effectively employ the suitable solutions to booster this kind of resource.
For the past decades, ASEAN developing countries have spent the dynamic period of economic development. As a member of ASEAN, VietNam gradually proves its position in the region. Viet Nam's economic reforms and 'open-door' policy since 1986 have restructured the economy from a 'highly centralized planned economy' to a 'market-oriented economy' regulated by the government (Kashiwaghi 1999, p. This country achieved a remarkably high average growth rate of 6.53% percent per annum during tlie period 1986 - 2000 (WDI, 2002).
However, according to Le (1997), it is able to see that VietNam is in the ' group of low level of domestic savings countries such as the Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and relatively far distance from the rest of ASEAN countries. VietNam is in the process of industrialization and modernization. The demand for capital to meet the development need is quite high (Nguyen, 2001) and savings are encouraged to increase so as to finance for that process. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the topic 'Determinants of domestic savings in ASEAN developing countries in the period 1986 -- 2000, the case of VietNam'.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY Basing on the integrated theory of savings and previous empirical studies on determinants of savings in developing countries, this thesis aims to view the impacts of some main factors such as income growth, age dependency ratio, real interest rate and financial development 2 on domestic savings in selected ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and VietNam) in general and especially for the case of VietNam. This research is therefore designed to investigate and answer the following key research questions: • Whether are there positive impacts of income growth, real interest rate and financial development on domestic savings? • Is there negative relationship between age dependency ratio and domestic savings? 1. DATA AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY To investigate the relationship between domestic savings and income growth, age dependency ratio, real interest rate and financial development in selected ASEAN countries in general and VietNam in particular, this research uses time-series and cross-section data (panel data) for the period 1986 - 2000. In the thesis, all data are secondary and taken from 2002 World Development Indicators CD-ROM of the World Bank, Asian Development Outlook 2002 of the Asian Development Bank, and the Viet Nam Statistical Yearbooks of GSO as well as data from update researches of VietNam Institute of Finance.
In this thesis, both qualitative and quantitative methods are applied, however the regression econometric analysis is considered as the main methodology. From the collected data, we can examine the relationship between domestic savings and other variables by making the ' regression so that we are able to explore the effects of each factor on domestic savings. STRUCTURE OF THESIS The thesis is composed of five chapters. Following the introduction, chapter two presents the literature review and empirical studies.
Because no single theory can completely explain the 3 determinants of savings in developing countries, the integrated theory of savings is applied as the analytical framework of the research. Chapter three provides a brief overview of determinants of savings in five ASEAN developing countries in general and Viet Nam in ' particular in order to provide the background for understanding the situation and solutions encouraging domestic savings in these countries. Chapter four covers the core study of the thesis. It discusses the model specification and estimation method, gives the basic findings of the regression results and answers the research questions.
Finally, chapter five summarizes the main findings of the thesis.