CORRECTED - CORRECTED-UPDATE 2-Fitch lowers Vietnam outlook as price pressur

(Corrects headline to outlook from rating) (Adds details, comments, changes dateline to HANOI)

By Grant McCool

HANOI, May 29 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings lowered the outlook on Vietnam's BB-minus sovereign rating to negative from stable on Thursday as double-digit inflation, a yawning trade deficit and banking woes strain the developing market economy.

Stock market investors have abandoned shares for gold, consumers hoarded rice as prices leapt, workers gone on strike for higher wages and people rushed to the black market to exchange dong to pay off dollar-denominated debts.

Vietnam, where macroeconomic stability has been taken for granted as it boasted among the world's highest growth rates since 2000, still has time to recover from this year's wobble, analysts said.

"The government needs to get better at managing information because people in the markets out there are acting defensively," said Jonathan Pincus, chief economist at the United Nations Development Programme in Hanoi. "If they knew more they would make better choices."

Growth targets for this year have been lowered to 7 percent from 8.5 to 9 percent previously in an attempt to cool the economy and tame inflation.

Fitch, citing annual inflation that hit 25.2 percent in May, affirmed a BB-minus foreign currency rating and the BB local currency rating.

There was little impact on currency and credit markets, which are already viewing inflation as a structural problem as the State Bank of Vietnam, the central bank, and the Communist Party government grapple with the country's move to a market economy.