Vietnam's GDP was 362,6, 8% of that means nearly 30 billion, if we take for example Germany, it will take the German economic growth of only 0.6% to match that, for the US it will be enough a 0.12! Percentages are misleading sometimes, well, most of the time.
The U.S. and Germany have relatively larger economies than Vietnam but with what resources they have they've been able to achieve this. There are other countries with the same size of economy as Vietnam but they could not achieve this.
And since the real numbers are in, Germany just grew 1.9%, at the size of their economy, at $4.03 trillion that's $76.57 billion.
Vietnam grew 8%, as I said above, it means only 30 billion!
So despite one growing 8% and one just 1.9%, the difference between the size of their economy went up instead of decreasing.
The numbers become even worse if we look at it from a per capita base since Vietnam also has 1/6 more people than Germany.
Vietnam has a cost of production below China, they also have gigantic inflation as I understand it which brings into question the quality of any measured growth as it might just be a nominal gain.
Vietnam has lower inflation than both the EU and the US right now, they did have problems in the past over the crisis but right now it's manageable. Besides, all GDP growth counts inflation every single one of those is inflation adjusted.
