Vietnam’s 0.1 percent SCOTT HARRIS   Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam's first dollar billionaire, is seen standing in the foreground between two show girls during a ceremony to open the cable car system at his resort property Vinpearl in the touristy city of Nha Trang in this March 19, 2007 photo. Photo: Tuoi Tre About a year ago, while working on a profile about Trung Nguyen Coffee founder Dang Le Nguyen Vu, for Forbes Magazine, I met an interesting businessman. He is a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam who quit a job at a state-owned enterprise to establish a firm that brokers mergers and acquisitions, sometimes involving companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange. Take a moment and let that last sentence sink in. Much has changed since Vietnam first initiated the Doi Moi economic reforms a generation ago. To help me understand the new, improved Vietnam, the M&A consultant pointed me to a YouTube video called “Entrepreneur’s Life,” in which the leader of the Vietnamese maker of Bulls Head Fertilizer croons a lyric that translates: “The country cannot be powerful without its people being rich.” Today, millions of Vietnamese still live in poverty and the per capita income is about $1,500, placing it barely into “middle income” status as measured by the World Bank. But it’s also obvious that Vietnam’s economic growth has minted more millionaires than ever before. Trung Nguyen’s Chairman Vu is certainly very wealthy, but his company is private and so his net worth difficult to estimate. Forbes’ new poster baron for Vietnam, based on public documents, is the man billed as Vietnam’s first billionaire: Pham Nhat Vuong, the founder and chairman of Vingroup, known for the Vincom commercial and residential properties, the VinPearl resorts as well as other interests. He is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. How did Vuong accomplish this feat? Vuong’s empire improbably began during his expatriate years in Ukraine, where he became a great success in instant noodles. Curiously, as more and more stories surface about Vietnam’s wealthiest citizens, it’s striking that several can trace the roots of their wealth back to their entrepreneurial experience as expats in Eastern Europe, in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. This is true of the leaders of Masan Group. Perhaps you’ve seen advertisements for EuroWindow, which I had always assumed was European, but turns out to be another Vietnamese success story with roots in Eastern Europe. Wealth, once rare in poor, war-ravaged Vietnam, is now becoming visible in the occasional sighting of Rolls Royces, Bentleys and other luxurious rides. There are also signs of a broadening prosperity. Many young Vietnamese seem prosperous because they have money to spend on nice clothes and new scooters and nights on the town. But many young adults have disposable income because they still live rent-free with parents. Meanwhile, developers of some 50,000 new but unsold upper-end housing units in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are anxiously hoping that more Vietnamese yuppies would save their money to buy a home. Between the well-to-do and the emerging middle class, developers anticipated a larger nouveau riche class for these prestigious homes. I can’t help but contrast Vietnam with the United States, which has its own widening disparity between the very rich and the rest of the populace. The recent, related troubles of real estate and banking hammered America’s economy before similar problems hit Vietnam. For the past decade, the American middle class has been shrinking and losing its prosperity, due to job losses and tax policies, while the richest 1 percent have become much obscenely wealthy, thanks to greedy political engineering. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s growth succeeded in producing its own 1 percent – or maybe just 0.1 per cent. The creation of a broad, prosperous middle class is a work in progress. The countries can seem like two sides of the same coin – a US silver dollar, I guess. The Vietnamese don’t use coins.  TuoitreNews