o alter course and go to an altogether unenviable route: embrace foreign investment and trade. The government's "doi moi" open door economic policies of 1986 led to a drastic reduction in its annual inflation rate from 680 percent to less than five percent. Growth in the economy is averaging a steady nine percent per year. The budget deficit is low. What in essence Vietnam did was to free the local people to do what they are best at, namely be free entrepreneurs. For example, when the government banned firecrackers to celebrate Tet in 1995, considering them both a waste of resources and a safety hazard, merchants promptly recorded the sound of pyrotechnics, and began selling the tapes.
Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with 80 percent of its population living in rural areas. Less than 15 percent of its roads are paved, and only 14 of its 53 provinces contribute to the national budget, meaning that the others are subsidized by the state. Only now is Vietnam i
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