I don't think so, their economic model is good for small sized countries but you can't scale it up. They today are just an "Import-Fix-Export" nation which has exports to GDP ratio of around 100%.
Which is why their GDP growth started severely faltering while rest of Asia is doing much better.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Vietnam is still a model for ease of doing business in the real sense, and I'm not talking about that index which only measures 3 cities in India.
There's a reason manufacturers are running to Vietnam despite the fact that Vietnam has a limited number of skilled workers, negligible domestic market, and doesn't have any world class infrastructure apart from ports.
Their regulatory environment needs to be studied, and will have lessons for what aspects states in India can adopt, if not country wide.
Secondly their emphasis on primary education can't be ignored, which is allowing them to smoothly transition to mid level manufacturing, and aren't stuck with garments like Bangladesh. It should also be studied why Indonesia and Philippines have so far been unable to match Vietnamese growth despite their larger populations and greater natural resources.
Thirdly, from what I'm hearing, they are now very seriously and methodically upgrading their higher education with the help of South Korea and Japan in the STEM field. I will not put it past Vietnam to have higher quality engineers than us 10 years from now, which will massively boost their service sector and allow them to upgrade to high end manufacturing while still retaining the mid and low level stuff.
If they concentrate on infrastructure and urban development the same way, we are looking at a very serious player going forward.
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