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Abstract
This paper documents the construction of social accounting matrices (SAMs)
for Vietnam for 1996 and 1997. The data sources used to construct the SAMs
include national accounts statistics, government budget data, the official 1996
input-output table, the 19 97/98 Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS), and
COMTRADE trade data. The agri-food sectors are particularly well represented
in the SAMs: the resulting VIETSAM includes 97 producing sectors
with eight agricultural sectors, two agricultural service sectors and 13 food
processing industries. In terms of institutional detail, the SAMs include five
factors of production (three types of labor distinguished by skill level, one type
of capital and one type of land), six household types (distinguished by rural/
urban, agricultural/non-agricultural, wage/self-employed), and one account
each for enterprises, government, investment/savings and rest-of-world. The
rest-of-world account is a purely non-trade- related account that keeps track of
financial transfers between Vietnamese institutions and the rest of the world.
This is because the innovative feature of this SAM is that is takes detailed account
of Vietnam’s foreign trade flows. Imports and exports of goods and services
are distinguished by trading partner – more specifically, 94 partner countries
are identified. The SAM is estimated using a cross-entropy approach,
which makes efficient use of all available data whilst at the same time allowing
for the incorporation of prior information and constraints.