“Vietnam’s participation in the global value chains: An empirical study on the automotive industry”

Abstract

The automotive industry plays a crucial role in national and global economic development. Vietnam and the ASEAN-5 countries are commented to be active in the automotive international production network but mainly participate in the low-value-added segments of the global value chains (GVC). This study aims to identify Vietnam’s position and level of participation in the global automotive value chain and compare them to the other ASEAN-5 nations. The paper uses the orthodox and modern trade-related GVC indicators built by Koopman et al. (2010) to accomplish the research objective. The results show that Vietnam and the ASEAN-5 countries located downstream of the global automotive value chain often have less potential to gain more value-added than the upstream position, despite their high level of participation. Compared to ASEAN-5 countries, Vietnam still needs to catch up. Although Vietnam’s auto industry has made many positive changes, it still mainly produces simple products and currently participates in the least added value segment in the global automotive value chain. The underdeveloped support industry in Vietnam is the main cause of this situation. The study makes several practical policy recommendations for Vietnam based on the research findings to improve its position in the production network for the automotive sector in the following years.