While Vietnam is developing at a rapid rate, why are Cambodia and Myanmar lagging behind in development

Abstract

Vietnam has achieved rapid development in the last 10 years because it has successfully implemented economic reform policies and improved effective state governance. Although Vietnam is a one-party communist state under the cohesive leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), it has managed to attract a high inflow of FDI. With much FDI inflows due to its good state governance, Vietnam's economy has rapidly developed. In comparison with Vietnam, resource rich Cambodia and Myanmar have lagged behind in development due to poor state governance and their inability to attract FDI. Although Cambodia and Myanmar made similar macroeconomic reforms in 1989 and 1994 respectively from centrally-planned economy to market-oriented economy, they did not achieve as successful development as Vietnam.