Vietnam has reported few new coronavirus cases every day since mid-April. Now schools are reopening, smaller restaurants are back in business and traffic jams are forming again in the financial center, Ho Chi Minh City, as commuters head to work. The Southeast Asian country has People walk by a poster reading in Vietnamese “Fighting COVID-19” in Hanoi, Vietnam on Thursday, Apr. 23, 2020. Business activities resume in Vietnam as the country lifts the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19.Vietnam’s economy will grow 4.8% this year, down from earlier expectations near 7%, the Asian Development Bank forecasts. On Monday Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said 2020 GDP growth should be more than 5%. Private analysts estimate just 2-3%. “Plus side, there is enough mouths and feet within Vietnam to keep things going, but that’s just within Vietnam itself, so it’s really the linkages to the rest of the world – to what extent that starts to normalize,” said Song Seng Wun, economist in the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore.  Vietnam in this respect follows a trend among other Southeast Asian countries with controlled virus caseloads and gradual economic reopening, Song said. But tourism has been “dead” since January, Matthaes said. In the first 11 months of 2019, by contrast, Vietnam received 16.3 million international travelers for a 15.4% increase over the same period of the previous year. Tourism made up about 8% of the economy. Phuong Hong, 40, a travel sector worker in Ho Chi Minh City, still has her job and reports to work in an office that’s quiet because of staffing rotations. On off days, she spends time at home with her eighth-grade son who will return to school next week for half days. She expects airlines and hotels eventually to offer deals for domestic travelers but worries that Vietnamese people will face health monitoring if they travel abroad and possibly higher airfares to offset any pre-flight disease screening. “We cannot go back to normal before the end of 2019 anymore, because you can see the restrictions on traveling,” Phuong said.Demand for Vietnam’s signature exports, such as car parts, smartphones and furniture, is expected to fall because consumers aren’t shopping. Raw materials from China have been hard to get and air cargo prices are higher than normal, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates says. Exports grew just 0.5% in the first quarter of 2020 and “results will continue to be gloomy” in the current quarter, the General Department of Vietnam Customs said in an online statement. 
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