"jupiterean" wrote in message news:...

> I just wonder how they came up with this index for VN. Economic statistics
> are still considered state secrets and generally inaccessible, aren't they ?
>
> Besides, in a system where bureaucrats are notorious for false reporting to
> impress their superiors, are these numbers really reliable? Just take a look
> around the country and anybody can see the severe income disparity between
> urban and rural areas, between people with connections (either with the
> government or with overseas Viets) and those with none. Those numbers on
> paper cannot beat observed reality.
>
> JoJ

The government publishes economic information. Economists at the
World Bank or elsewhere check it for plausibility, both for internal
logic and how consisent it is with other sources of information, such
as trade data, observation, interviews about whether incomes are
rising or falling, etc. It is fairly easy to fudge the numbers,
inflating them a bit. It is very difficult to completely fabricate
non-existent output growth. An extreme level of secrecy is necessary
for that, I mean North Korea level secrecy. And even with them
certain vague trends can be guessed at.

I doubt deliberate macroeconomic reporting fraud is a big factor (like
it was in the Brezhnev era Soviet Union), but there are possible
upward biases in the growth accounting method, for instance if prices
don't reflect true costs and values; a problem in all economies, but
more so in ones with a lot of state intervention in prices.