HANOI, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's continued tourism recovery in 2024 should add over 1 percentage point to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year, Vietnam News cited Michael Kokalari, a chartered financial analyst and chief economist at VinaCapital on Thursday.
The number of foreign tourists visiting Vietnam is expected to increase by 40 percent this year -- after having leapt by nearly 250 percent last year -- driven by the continued recovery in outbound Chinese tourism, he predicted in his report.
Last year the tourism recovery boosted the country's GDP growth by more than 4 percentage points, said the report.
The surge in the number of foreign tourists in the post COVID-19 period directly boosted GDP growth, but he observed that foreign tourism puts money into the hands of a wide range of local merchants, further boosting the economy, albeit indirectly.
"We estimate that the total contribution of tourism to Vietnam's economy is over 15 percent of GDP," he said.
Vietnam welcomed over 4.6 million international arrivals and 30 million domestic visitors in Q1, said the country's General Statistics Office. ■
