The Mekong Memo: Vietnam

Vietnam 20260611

August Whitcraft — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:40:10 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Horton International is your premier partner for executive search in Southeast Asia. Whether you're a small startup or a global corporation, our reliable and effective recruiting solutions are tailored to meet your unique needs. With extensive experience and offices across the region, we excel at overcoming recruitment challenges and securing top talent for your organization.

Click here to learn how Horton can make your life easier.

The Memo is published weekdays - Cambodia (every Monday), Myanmar (Tuesday), Laos (Wednesday), Vietnam (Thursday) and Thailand (Friday). The Thailand edition is free in its entirety; the others usually abbreviated for non-paid subscribers.

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Hanoi Buys Indian Missiles, Pours Concrete in the Spratlys

Indian Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed at the Shangri-La Dialogue on May 30 that Hanoi has agreed to buy the BrahMos cruise missile, making it the second foreign buyer after the Philippines. The shore-based version travels at nearly three times the speed of sound and has a range of almost 300 km (about 180 miles), enough to give pause to any naval commander operating near the Vietnamese coast. The confirmation arrived in the same week that satellite imagery analyzed by Radio Free Asia showed Vietnamese construction underway at 27 spots on at least 18 reefs in the Spratlys, with ports, runways, military facilities, and communications arrays going up across the chain. China is Hanoi's number one trading partner, and the two governments have spent recent years talking up warmer ties. Beijing seized the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974 after a bloody battle and has pushed its claims in the South China Sea ever since.

Read more: Newsweek (Philippines comparison), Eurasia Review (acreage reclaimed)

Hanoi's Wish List Lands on Washington's Desk

Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc gave US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau a pretty specific shopping list during talks in Hanoi on June 10, asking Washington to drop Vietnam from its D1 and D3 export control lists, recognize its market economy status, and pushed for the close of a reciprocal trade deal. Landau, in town for the ASEAN Future Forum 2026, offered the standard warm verbiage about a "strong, independent, resilient and prosperous" partner, and mentioned American interest in critical minerals, aviation, energy and defense alongside trade. Defense Minister Phan Van Giang, who also met Landau, said bilateral defense ties were one of the "most effective and practical" areas of engagement. What Hanoi got back was mostly affirmation that Trump "highly appreciated" To Lam's February trip to Washington.

Foxconn Wants Its Watts Green AND Guaranteed

Foxconn and Brookfield Asset Management released a plan on June 9 to build up to 1 gigawatt of utility-scale wind, solar, and battery capacity to power Foxconn's Vietnam factories and supplier network, underpinned by a long-term power purchase agreement and funded through Brookfield's Catalytic Transition Fund. Before war in the Middle East upended energy supply lines, Vietnam was buying nearly four-fifths of its oil from Kuwait, a dependency that has been surely been focusing minds in both Hanoi and Taipei. Foxconn chief investment officer James Tu said the deal was a good way to get "stable and cost-effective power" for the company's regional growth more than it was a green-washing exercise. The buildout will come as Vietnam's direct PPA framework continues to evolve. The National Assembly is at this moment rewriting it to try and better court foreign investors. Brookfield manages more than $1 trillion in assets and runs one of the world's largest renewable energy portfolios of hydro, wind, solar, and storage on five continents.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Daniel Cheng), Vietnam News (Vietnam legislative efforts), Semafor (Kuwait oil dependency), Focustaiwan TW (James Tu), Asian Power (direct PPA framework)

LG Innotek Bets Big on Hai Phong Substrates

LG Innotek signed an MoU with Hai Phong on June 4 to build its first semiconductor substrate plant outside South Korea in what will be a 330,000 sqm facility. Construction starts next month, completion is expected by May 2027. The plant will produce RF-SiP, FC-CSP, and FC-BGA substrates, the advanced packaging components that sit between raw chip fabrication and finished devices, and that every AI server rack and 5G handset currently needs more of. The Gumi factory already running in Korea is running near full capacity. CEO Moon Hyuk-soo wants the packaging solutions unit raking in more than 3 trillion KRW by 2030.

Read more: Vietnam News (Gumi reinvestment), Vietnam Insiders (6G demand)

China Eats What Washington Won't

Vietnamese seafood shipments to China and Hong Kong rose 40.5% to $1.2 billion in the first five months of 2026, more than offsetting a 10% slide in US-bound exports to $689 million. Shrimp led the pack globally at $1.9 billion in all markets, which is about 40% of all seafood shipments. The industry is already raising the flag about raw material shortages and stricter Chinese food safety rules as reasons the second half may not keep up.

Read more: VnExpress

Photo by Ruslan Bardash on Unsplash

Gold Bugs Get Squashed

Retail investors who rode bullion to its peak are nursing losses of more than 27% since early March, with the Saigon Jewelry Company bar price settling at VND138.3 million per tael on Wednesday after a single-day drop of 3.82%. The local premium that once made Vietnamese gold a juicy arb play has collapsed to roughly VND4 million per tael, down from nearly VND12 million recently, as sellers cashed out over fears that new supply would push prices lower still. Precious metal and gemstone imports rose 284% year-on-year, the fastest growth of any major import category, and the Vietnam Gold Traders Association is lobbying for a 50-ton yearly tariff-free import quota, saying the ask is needed to support more jewelry exports.

Read more: VnExpress (Wednesday price drop), VnExpress (local-global premium), VnExpress (rate hike pressure), VnExpress (50-ton import quota)

A Single Stock to Rule Them All

The VN-Index saw an all-time high of 1,933 points in May, and nearly two-thirds of actively managed funds still couldn't keep up. Eighteen closed out the first five months in the red. The rally leaned heavily on Vingroup-connected names, even as the VN30, tracking the market's biggest stocks, fell 1.3% in May and is down 1.7% so far for the year. Dragon Capital's DCDS and DCDE both held VIC and VHM and still lost 6.5% and 6.1% respectively, dragged down partly by Mobile World, which fell more than 9% through the month of May. Even the year's top fund, VNDAF, watched its return shrink from 16.5% to 9.3% in a month after property developer NVL fell more than a quarter in May, after having rocketed 45% in April.

Vuong Sells a Million Cars to Himself

VinFast has signed a deal to supply Green SM, the ride-hailing company that is also controlled by Pham Nhat Vuong, with a million electric cars and four million e-motorbikes by 2030, according to its Q1 financials. VinFast showed a loss of more than VND28 trillion in Q1, up from VND17.7 trillion a year earlier, even as Green SM's charter capital has risen from VND3 trillion to VND43 trillion since its 2023 launch. Outside the empire, real customers are hard to come by, though VinFast did sell 58,600 electric cars in Q1, up 61% year-on-year. 8% of the total went to overseas markets.

Read more: VnExpress (Green SM expansion), TechNode Global (charging infrastructure)

Bangkok and Hanoi Pencil In $50 Billion

Thailand and Vietnam set a bilateral trade goal of $50 billion, with a nearer-term waypoint of $25 billion, after Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's June 8 talks in Hanoi on the sidelines of the ASEAN Future Forum. The two are currently in the middle of celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations, and in May they upgraded their relationship to a Complete Strategic Partnership. The bi-national talks included much more than just trade, taking in defense exchanges, joint maritime patrols, a shared "Two Countries, One Destination" tourism pitch, and invitations to Thai defense firms for December's Vietnam International Defense Expo in Hanoi.

Read more: Aa Com TR (summit), Travel and Tour World (tourism visitor counts), VnExpress (defense expo invite), VnEconomy (three connectivity strategy)

Hanoi Stops Promising Workers a Deed

In a noteworthy shift of messaging, Vietnam is retiring the dream of mass homeownership for its workers. At the 14th Vietnam Trade Union Congress on June 5, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh changed the goal from “owning a home” to having "the right to housing." He mentioned long-term affordable rentals near industrial zones as part of his pitch. Housing prices may have made the change inevitable, because costs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City now run 20 to 30 times average annual income. That’s compared to what’s considered healthy elsewhere of of 5 to 7 time. More than 70 percent of Hanoi's 2.7 million workers already live in rented boarding houses. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor says it’s on track to deliver about 10,700 social housing units by 2030, with 1,722 apartments already under construction in Bac Ninh and the former Ben Tre (now Vinh Long), expected to be finished sometime next year.

Read more: VnEconomy (PM rental commitment), VnEconomy (VGCL timeline), VnEconomy (National Housing Corporation)

Towers Down, Trees Up on the Saigon River

Ho Chi Minh City has put the kibosh on a 2016 plan for more than 3,100 riverfront apartments at the Nha Rong-Khanh Hoi site and broke ground April 29 on a 39.5-hectare public park instead. Sun Group is building it under a build-transfer contract worth VND20 trillion ($760 million), with no state budget money involved. The reversal is remarkable partly because the city currently offers residents about 0.7 sq.m of public park space per person, against its own stated livability benchmark of 8 to 10 (for comparison, Bangkok (no green paradise) manages 3.3). The Nha Rong site is a few hundred meters from the Nguyen Hue walking street, on one of the most coveted land banks in the city.

Read more: VnExpress

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share The Mekong Memo

If you value the Mekong Memo, please consider buying (or gifting!) a paid subscription, sharing it on social media or forwarding this email to someone who might enjoy it. Please also “like” this newsletter by clicking the ❤️ below (or sometimes above, depending on the platform), which helps us get visibility on the Substack network.

Vietnam 20260604

August Whitcraft — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:39:09 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Washington Opens a New File on Hanoi

Vietnam's May trade deficit got to $5.21 billion, the biggest number since December 1996 and a mile further than Bloomberg's $3.98 billion median forecast. Imports were $52.14 billion (+33.8%), as manufacturers stockpiled semiconductors and energy ahead of what looks like might be a rough second half. The first five months of 2026 have flipped a $5.1 billion surplus into a $13.8 billion deficit y-o-y. It’s not a great time - USTR Jamieson Greer announced a Section 301 investigation into Vietnam's IP protection and enforcement on May 29, after the country got slapped with a “priority foreign country” designation in the April 30 Special 301 Report. The January-May trade surplus with the US was up more than a fifth to $60.4 billion. A determination is expected by the end of November (a three-month extension is possible). This is the third Section 301 action against Vietnam in of late, after the 2020 currency and timber probes. Both of those were resolved through bilateral agreements instead of tariffs.

Read more: Yahoo Finance (export miss), TradingView (May surplus reversal), Woodworkingnetwork (IP enforcement scope), Furnituretoday (tariff risk, timeline)

Hanoi Buys Spares for Planes It Doesn't Have

The US State Department approved a $100 million foreign military sale to Vietnam for sustainment support for the C-130 Hercules, an aircraft Hanoi does not fly. The package includes engine propellers, aircraft components, ground handling equipment, spare parts, and repair-and-return support, in addition to training aids and contractor logistics services. Washington's official reasoning is that the sale supports US foreign policy and national-security objectives by updating the air and transport capabilities of an Indo-Pacific partner. RTX is named as contractor, which indicates a likelihood of secondhand C-130s, not newly-built aircraft. Ordering sustainment infrastructure before aircraft arrive is not entirely unusual in the procurement game, however. The last major US-Vietnam defense milestone was Hanoi's elevation to Complete Strategic Partner status in 2023, and the arms relationship has been improving steadily since.

Read more: Aviationweek (future acquisition hint), TradingView (regional balance), Militaryembedded (full package breakdown), Flightglobal (RTX secondhand)

Hanoi Takes the Mic, Beijing Sends a Major General

To Lam opened the 23rd Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 29, the first time Vietnam's top leader has given the keynote at Asia's top security forum. The speech hit some familiar notes for anyone who’s been watching Hanoi's diplomatic evolution. Competition between states is real, To Lam said, but must be "bounded by law, guided by transparency, and exercised with restraint," with ASEAN at the center of whatever regional architecture comes into play. He mentioned the sea specifically and reaffirmed the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as his preferred basis for resolving disputes in what Hanoi calls the East Sea. China's defense minister Dong Jun skipped the forum for the second year in a row, so Beijing was represented by Major General Meng Xiangqing of the PLA's National Defence University.

Read more: CNBC (responsible commitment), Vietnam Insiders (diplomatic exit ramps), VnEconomy (To Lam recommendations)

To Lam's Three-Capital Shuffle

Bangkok, Singapore, and Manila over four days, and the deliverables from To Lam's Southeast Asia swing can be tallied. A CP-FPT MoU signed in Bangkok on May 28 puts AI and smart-farm tech across C.P. Vietnam's Feed-Farm-Food chain, and is expected to result in full product traceability and operational cost cuts of 20 percent. In Singapore, the talk was on increasing the number of Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Parks to 30 this year, three decades after the first one opened. Two-way trade with SG was nearly $12 billion in 2025. In Manila, Hanoi and the Philippines upgraded to an “Enhanced Strategic Partnership,” set a $10 billion trade target, and signed a defense MoU on maritime security and disaster response.

Read more: VnEconomy (CP-FPT MoU), VnEconomy (Singapore $100B FDI), VnEconomy (Philippines trade sectors), VnExpress (four agreements signed)

Six-Year Price High, Targets Slipping

Annual CPI was a warm 5.6% in May, the highest reading since January 2020, with transport costs up about 12.5% year-on-year as Middle East conflict keeps fuel prices up and hot weather edges electricity demand higher. At a June 3 cabinet meeting reviewing the first five months of ‘26, PM Pham Minh Chinh confirmed what anyone watching the data already suspected: industrial production, agriculture, trade, and services are all running below target in a few important areas. He asked ministries to find the root causes and propose better policy remediation. Core inflation held at 4.67% in May, the highest rate since March 2023. Deputy Prime Ministers are now expected to work directly with ministries, localities and sectors to unblock bottlenecks, and particular attention is expected for industry, agriculture, and other sectors that are showing signs of slowing growth or even (gasp!) decline.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (AMRO forecast), TradingView (CPI breakdown), Nikkei Asia (trade deficit), VnEconomy (cabinet response)

Photo by digitalarbyter :) on Unsplash

A Doi Moi Rewrite at 40

At a national scientific conference in Hai Phong on May 26, policymakers, economists, and business leaders chewed the fat on at topic that Hanoi’s been circling for years but rarely said outright, which is that the 40-year-old Doi Moi growth model has run its course. Growth is still far too reliant on investment capital and cheap labor, productivity and innovation lag, and the social governance system is missing the data interoperability needed to run anything in real time (which seems like table stakes in 2026). The framework on offer borrows from the developmental state playbook that Japan and South Korea ran during their industrial ascensions, reoriented around science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation, using data and algorithms as the new growth drivers. The 2045 target, when Vietnam wants to realize its ambitions as a high-income country, is what's concentrating minds. The way that institutional machinery might be able to deliver on the pivot is the bit which the conference papers left for later.

Read more: VnEconomy (middle-income trap), VnEconomy (governance components)

Twenty Years' Salary for a Flat, or Rent

Hanoi apartment prices have gone up a dizzying 72% in the last five years, but annual wage growth has only tipped 6-10% and the gap seems like it’s going to keep widening. The result is that residential prices are now about 20 times the average annual household income. The result is a sorting of young buyers into three camps. Some are saving grimly and waiting, some are retreating to satellite cities where prices have more give, and others have dropped homeownership as a near-term goal altogether. The PM says a supply shortage is "the primary bottleneck."

Read more: VnEconomy (Gen Z survey), Asian News Network (rent-to-own demand), VnEconomy (PM directive timeline)

Hanoi Puts a Price on the Old Quarter

Starting January 2028, drivers who want to get into the historic core around Hoan Kiem and Ba Dinh will need to pay a toll. The fee zone will expand ring by ring out to Ring Road 2 by 2030 and Ring Road 3 by 2032. The city has 8.1 million registered vehicles (7 million are motorbikes/ ~95% running on gasoline), plus another 1.2 million rolling in daily from the provinces. A low-emission zone inside Ring Road 1 is going to be implemented first, next month, and will limit gasoline motorbikes by time and area.

Read more: VnExpress

Seoul Pitches Reactors but Moscow’s Banked a Deal

Korean President Lee Jae Myung flew to Hanoi last month to try and flog Korean reactor technology. He stood beside PM Pham Minh Chinh and pointed to Czechia, Poland, and the UAE as proof of concept. The problem is that Rosatom locked in Ninh Thuan 1 in March, when Moscow and Hanoi formalized the deal as a sign of their countries' friendship. What's left on the table is Ninh Thuan 2, and Korea is going into that fight trailing on the metrics Hanoi wants to use (state financing, guaranteed fuel supply, and a partner willing to move on Hanoi's timeline). By 2050, Vietnam wants nuclear to cover 6 to 8 percent of its grid needs by way of using up to four large reactors and fifteen small modular reactors.

Tiki Who? TikTok Shop Turns VN Into a Two-Horse Race

Vietnam's four biggest e-commerce platforms reported a combined $13.6 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) between May 2025 and April 2026 (+37% yoy). Almost none of that growth went to anyone outside the top two. TikTok Shop's GMV was up 83% to $5.96 billion and increased its share to 44% from 33%. Shopee was still the frontrunner with $7.29 billion in sales, but its share slid from 61% to 53%. Lazada, the Alibaba property that was once a serious contender, saw its share slashed in half to 3% on $385 million in sales. The biggest tailwind in TikTok's climb is "shoppertainment," the livestream-plus-short-video format that has brands redirecting ad budgets toward influencers who flog everything from diapers and dairy in real time. Tiki, the homegrown pioneer, wrangled $5 million in GMV, down 82% yoy.

Read more: The Investor

Nine Thousand Needed, Twenty-Five Hundred Short

Long Thanh is 76% complete and has burned through VND65.6 trillion ($2.5 billion) in contracted work, but it's still short 2,500 workers. The passenger terminal (which is the most complicated piece), is at almost two-thirds done - imported equipment remains covered and waiting for crews that haven't shown up yet. Competing infrastructure projects in Dong Nai are pulling from the same labor pool, and several contractors have started to slow progress as a result. Everyone’ waiting on price-adjustment policies that don't exist yet for fixed-price contracts that have been squeezed by rising costs. ACV is still expected (hoped?) to begin trial operations in September, the first of three testing phases before a December commercial opening.

Read more: VnExpress (labor shortfall), VnExpress (180-day campaign)

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share The Mekong Memo

Vietnam 20260528

August Whitcraft — Thu, 28 May 2026 03:02:42 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Mango Tree Diplomacy in Udon Thani

To Lam went to Udon Thani (Thailand) on Wednesday, planting a mango tree at a Ho Chi Minh memorial and then sitting down with business leaders at a Vietnamese restaurant to talk about direct flight routes. It's a charming opener for a state visit in the province with Thailand's largest Thai-Vietnamese community. The three-day trip is coming during 50 year anniversary year of diplomatic relations and it’s To Lam's first visit since taking office last month. Thai investors are participating in 804 projects in Vietnam worth $15.4 billion of registered capital (Thailand is Vietnam’s eighth-largest foreign investor), and two-way trade was $22.1 billion in 2025, (+8.3% vs 2024). Thursday will get To Lam an audience with Thailand's king and talks with Prime Minister Anutin; both governments want to push trade to $25 billion.

Read more: Khaosod English (arrival), VnEconomy (investment)

Italy Bumped From Top Ten by Upstart Vietnam

Vietnam pumped out 2.1 million tonnes of crude steel in April 2026, enough to push Italy out of the World Steel Association's global top 10 for the first time. Output in the first four months was 8.5 million tonnes, and the country is now Southeast Asia's largest producer by a comfortable margin. Vietnam’s journey to this point is worth reviewing. In 2000, local mills depended almost entirely on imported billets to make construction rebar. By 2025, output had risen to 24.6 million tonnes and the product mix had grown to include products like wind power towers, oil rigs, and shipbuilding plate. All is not perfect, in the story, however, as Australia's Anti-Dumping Commission has begun an investigation some forms of steel from Vietnam (and also South Korea) after a complaint.

Read more: Tvbrics (2023 baseline rank), VnEconomy (Italy surpassed), Kallanish (import volumes, timeline)

Hanoi Tells Speculators the Party's Over

Notice No. 64-TB/VPTW, from the Party Central Committee's Office last week, is an indication that Hanoi wants to reorient its property market around renters, not flippers. Party General Secretary and State President To Lam said clearly that "Housing is for living, not for speculation or asset accumulation." The notice names rental apartments in major cities, industrial parks, economic zones, and labor migration hubs as a priority through 2030, and it’s release is going to inspire a raft of agencies to crack down on profiteering. Amendments to both the Housing Law and the Real Estate Business Law are expected later this year.

Read more: VnEconomy (digital housing tech), VnEconomy (finance mechanisms)

Banks Catch a Chill in Hot Economy

The World Bank sees 6.8% growth for 2026, calling it the strongest-positioned economy in ASEAN after last year's 8% showing. Exports hit a record $475 billion (93% of GDP). The macro picture is pretty good, the banking sector picture is… less so. In Q1 2026, mid-sized retail lenders took the hardest hit, as return on average assets fell 10 basis points on-quarter to 1.4%, net interest margins were compressed an average of 11 basis points on higher funding costs, and CASA-to-gross loans slid 2 percentage points to 18%. Techcombank and ACB saw deposit outflows and MB and TPBank had weaker corporate deposits. Large state-owned banks were able to mostly hold steady, helped by stronger deposit franchises and more diversified loan books. VIS Rating expects NIM compression and rising credit costs to keep grinding on smaller lenders through the rest of the year.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (retail delinquencies), VnEconomy (FDI disbursement)

September or Bust

FTSE Russell's September 2026 review is still the date that stock market participants have circled on the calendar. An upgrade to growing-market status should bring in up to $1.7 billion in passive ETF money to Ho Chi Minh-listed stocks. The harder sell is going to be almost everything else. Foreigners have been net sellers so far this year, liquidity’s eased over the past eight weeks as deposit rates crept higher and money drifted into gold, dollars and bank savings accounts. The VN-Index's gains have clustered almost entirely in Vingroup-connected names even as the rest of the board has stumbled sideways. If you take out the Vingroup gang, the market is trading at about 12 times earnings, compared to a five-year average near 16.

Read more: The Investor

Photo by Huy Nguyen on Unsplash

Dad's Money is Son's Problem

Pham Nhat Anh, 33, took over as chairman of VinFast on May 24, replacing Le Thi Thu Thuy, who left the board to focus on her role as vice chairwoman at parent company Vingroup. VinFast reported record revenues of VND90.4 trillion ($3.6 billion) last year with a net loss of more than VND97 trillion, and the company has said that it plans to sell off its manufacturing operations in Vietnam and shift roughly VND182 trillion in debt to a group of buyers that includes his father, Pham Nhat Vuong, Southeast Asia's richest man. Anh joined VinFast in February 2019 after running Vingroup's Vinpearl resort arm as deputy CEO, and joined the board last November. He also runs VinMetal, the group's steel subsidiary. Dad has promised the slimmed-down VinFast will become profitable next year.

Read more: VnExpress

Death Row Birkin Beats Reserve by 482%

A Hermès bag seized from condemned tycoon Truong My Lan received 119 bids and sold for a stunning VND11.7 billion (~$444k!) on Thursday, 482% above its reserve price, while a size 30 companion piece got only four bids and closed 8.5% above reserve at VND2.54 billion. Together the two bags were worth $536,000 at Ho Chi Minh City's Asset Auction Service Center, a contrast to the Reverie Saigon yacht, which has been listed multiple times and remains unsold after an 18% price cut to VND42.5 billion. Lan, sentenced to death for the $27 billion Saigon Commercial Bank fraud, told the court in September 2024 that one bag came from Italy and the other was a gift from a Malaysian billionaire, asking that they be returned as keepsakes for her descendants. Investigators have taken more than 1,200 properties and other assets tied to her Van Thinh Phat empire.

Read more: VnExpress

Novatek Visits Hanoi

Novatek vice chairman Sergey Soloviev has had a busy couple of days pumping hands and chewing ears in Hanoi. He had a May 25 sit-down with EVN deputy CEO Nguyen Tai Anh, then a May 26 meeting at the Ministry of Industry and Trade with deputy minister Nguyen Hoang Long, and officials from MoIT and “provincial authorities.” The Russian company, which put Yamal LNG on the global map in 2017, is now pitching the full stack, including fuel supply, import terminals, regasification, and gas-fired generation. EVN made clear none of it can possibly work in isolation - port geology, grid connectivity, and centralized import hubs all need to be preconditions for any northern deal. Novatek representatives had previously visited Thanh Hoa in April - they’re keen on getting involved with planned LNG power projects there.

Read more: The Investor (EVN energy security), Portnews RU (MoIT meeting)

Hanoi Sets a Price on Wrongthink

A decree that will come into force on July 1 sets out fines of up to VND 30 million for social media users who share fabricated, false, or "distorted" content, post maps that misrepresent the country’s sovereignty, or produce material mimicking journalism (is The Memo in jeopardy?) Vietnamese individuals, foreign nationals, telecom firms, internet providers, domain registrars, and even representative offices of foreign postal operators are all going to fall within the scope of the law. Account administrators who don’t yank flagged content when ordered be subject to the same fines. The decree doesn't make clear who it will be that decides what counts as distortion.

Read more: VnExpress

Born After 2010? No Smokes for You.

Vietnam's Health Ministry has proposed a generational tobacco cutoff that would make it permanently illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born from 2010 onward. The draft will be read in the National Assembly's second session (October). A deputy chief of office at the Medical Services Administration shared the plan at a World No Tobacco Day workshop on May 22, suggesting the cutoff would produce a generation that never starts smoking instead of one that's told to quit. New Zealand pioneered this model in 2022, then scrapped it two years later when a new government was ushered in. The U.K.'s Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, which applies to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, is still standing. Vietnam has 15.8 million adult smokers, and 41 percent of its male population enjoys the cancer stick.

Read more: VnExpress

Banks Want More Than Title Deeds

The Ministry of Finance wants to let SMEs pledge digital assets, intellectual property, and future property rights as loan collateral. There’s definitely a need for something to change. Currently less than one in 10 SMEs can get a bank loan (compare with 56.1% of large firms), in a country where SMEs make up 95% of all enterprises but contribute less than 20% of revenue. FiinGroup's 2025 credit outlook explains a little about why banks have kept their distance, as more than 70% of SMEs categoriezed as medium-to-high risk counterparties and the processing of a small loan takes as much work as a large one.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (policy shift), VnEconomy ($5.7T gap)

Landlocked Laos Asks Hanoi for a Ride to the Sea

At the Vietnam-Laos Logistics Business Forum in Vientiane on May 26, Laos laid out a 12-point reform plan with specific targets. The plan would cut customs clearance times at border crossings by at least half, import-export licensing times by at least 40 percent, and get rid of at least half of what the plan calls "unnecessary checkpoints" on domestic routes. The ask to Hanoi is also concrete, namely to share logistics experience, help build out warehousing infrastructure, and give Lao better access to the Vung Ang Port complex in Ha Tinh. Some of the challenges between here and there are incompatible electronic customs documentation, infrastructure bottlenecks, and high cross-border costs. A proposed Vung Ang-Vientiane rail route is also on the table.

Vietnam 20260521

August Whitcraft — Thu, 21 May 2026 02:44:12 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Two Million Barrels, Five Days, One Letter

The Agios Fanourios I, a Malta-flagged supertanker carrying about 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude, reversed course in the Gulf of Oman on May 11 after US Central Command redirected it as part of enforcement against Iran, then sat in position, waiting, for five days. PetroVietnam Oil told US authorities that any more delay would force a stop to operations at the Nghi Son refinery and cut fuel supply to consumers, businesses, and public services throughout Vietnam, and the move seems to have worked. The ship restarted its journey on May 16 and is expected at Nghi Son by May 30.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (Hormuz shipping confidence), Marineinsight (departure timeline)

Nvidia's Second Home Gets the Good Stuff

Foxconn is becoming Nvidia's assembly partner in Vietnam for SXM modules, the chipmaker's top-tier data-center GPU platform that powers systems running large-scale AI workloads. A current job listing for an "SXM Manufacturing Test Engineer" specifies that the hire would spend most of their time at Foxconn factories, building and validating next-generation GPU boards. It's a step up from the consumer electronics work Vietnam is traditionally known for. Nvidia is recruiting for dozens of positions - factory planners to senior operations managers, with several requiring Chinese fluency in addition to English. The push follows on Jensen Huang's December 2024 trip to Hanoi, where he signed deals on an AI research center and data infrastructure and called Vietnam Nvidia's "second home." In February, Trump removed Vietnam from the export control list it had shared with China and Russia since the Cold War, clearing the legal path for this sort of transfer.

Read more: The Investor (job posting, headcounts), Lowy Institute (export control removal)

A $1.5 Trillion Bill and a Better Class of Foreigner

Vietnam's newly approved 2026-2030 socio-economic plan has Hanoi's ambitions get a price tag of VND38,500 trillion (a staggering $1.48 trillion), of which well more than a trillion of that will need to come from the private sector, investment funds, and foreign companies. The qualitative shift is probably more than the big number, however. A soon-to-be-released Politburo resolution will reposition FDI from its current role of “capital to be attracted” to an integral part of the domestic growth model. After nearly four decades of rolling out the welcome mat, only 15 percent of Vietnamese companies can supply goods or services to foreign-invested enterprises (compare with 40 percent in Thailand and almost half in Malaysia). The FDI sector is responsible for nearly three-quarters of total trade turnover and makes up almost a quarter of GDP. It’s a bit of a "transit pipeline" problem where components come in, assembly gets done, and profits get sent back out by way of dividends, royalties, and transfer pricing.

Read more: VnEconomy (Top 30 GDP target), VnEconomy (Politburo FII expansion), VnEconomy (Top 3 ASEAN timeline), VnEconomy (70 priority technologies), VnEconomy (42-indicator gaps)

Vietnam Writes the AI Rulebook

Vietnam has enacted a binding AI law, putting it among the first countries anywhere to set wide-ranging rules on the technology that will apply to generative tools from OpenAI, Anthropic, and the like. Companies will be required to classify their products by risk level and label AI-generated content, including deepfakes, before it gets to Vietnamese users. The authorities are going to get the power to enforce compliance.

Hanoi Tears Itself Down to Rebuild Itself Up

A draft resolution published May 20 would ban private vehicles from central Hanoi streets starting January 1, 2035, a date that’s been chosen with a metro network that mostly doesn't exist in mind. The city ~~hopes for~~ plans 96.8 km of metro track by 2030 and wants to finish the full network by 2035. The motorbike restrictions will kick in once public transport can absorb displaced trips. Central Hanoi is already a construction site. The $606 million Tran Hung Dao bridge is clearing homes along Van Kiep Street, the $759 million Tu Lien bridge will reclaim nearly 294,000 square meters in Hong Ha Ward, and Ring Road 1 crews are racing to finish the roadbed before September 2. Things are on the move.

Read more: VnExpress (vehicle restrictions), VnExpress (bridge & road)

Photo by Helga Christina on Unsplash

Seoul and Tokyo Bring Batteries to the Bike Fight

Hanoi signed an MOU with LG Energy Solution and Honda on May 19 to build out a battery-swapping network for electric motorbikes, starting with 50 pilot stations near Hoan Kiem ward in Q3 2026. The ambition is to scale to 1,000 stations citywide from Q3 2027. Honda, which owned nearly nine-tenths of Vietnam's motorcycle market in 2025, will provide the bikes and develop the battery packs/ swapping units; LG will provide its cylindrical 2170 batteries and run the safety management system. The pilot will put 500 electric motorcycles on the road. An LG representative called Vietnam "the most critical country in Southeast Asia for the transition to electric two-wheelers."

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (2170 battery role), TechNode Global (vice chairman), VnEconomy (subsidy tiers)

862,000 Residents Shown the Door

Hanoi People's Committee Chairman Tran Sy Thanh signed off on a plan to move 862,000 residents out of the historic city core by 2045, with the first 442,000 to be pulled from Red River flood plains, West Lake and several inner-city streets between 2026 and 2035, and the remaining 420,000 from the Old Quarter and other areas inside Ring Road 3 over the decade following. The receiving zones, Dong Anh, Gia Lam and the Hoa Lac science and technology hub to the west, are being built up around metro stations, with the city aiming for at least 45 square meters of floor space per person to be available by 2035. The Old Quarter's resident population has already fallen between 30 and 50 percent over the past 20 years on its own, according to the Hanoi Association of Architects.

Read more: VnExpress (housing targets, GDP)

Vietnamese Banks Pay Up, or Skip the Bond Market Entirely

Vietnamese banks that managed to raise capital through bonds in April are paying 8.4 to 8.9 percent APR, nearly double the 5.2 to 5.3 percent the same gang was willing to accept a year earlier. Rates have risen close enough to lending yields that issuing bonds barely makes sense, and the market has noticed. Banks made up 100 percent of corporate bond issuance in Q1 2025 and only 30 percent in Q1 2026; real estate issuers took the top slot at nearly two-thirds. Rather than lock in those tepid yields, banks spent the quarter patching liquidity by way of taking deposits, interbank borrowing, and open market operations. Average lending rates at commercial banks were 7.4 to 9.7 percent in March, up 0.7 points since the end of 2025.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review

MoMo Lends Faster, Scammers Move Faster Still

MoMo and VCBNeo signed a Pay Later deal this week. The deal will see artificial intelligence agents approving credit lines up to VND20 million instantly, with no paperwork, based on spending history. Vietnamese users lost VND8 trillion ($304 million) to online scams in 2025 - MoMo's CEO Nguyen Manh Tuong told a recent forum that the problem isn't “fraudulent” transactions, it's users willingly authorizing transfers while being psychologically manipulated. MoMo says its AI catches nearly 29,000 abnormal transactions and sends warnings more than 10,000 users every day.

Read more: Vietnam News (CEO quotes), Tipranks (Pay Later terms)

Gold, Hidden in Plain Circuits

Hanoi police have charged seven people, five of them Chinese nationals, in what investigators are calling the capital's largest-ever gold smuggling bust. Roughly 300 kg of gold worth VND1.2 trillion (about $47 million) moved in from Hong Kong hidden inside electronic equipment. The ringleader, a Chinese national, hired a local, to take delivery and pass the metal up the chain. The local man told investigators he knew the gold was smuggled and took the job anyway for VND150-200 million a month (a handy $6,000-$8,000 in his pocket). Once melted and recast into bullion, the proceeds cycled back through the same man, who then converted the earnings into cryptocurrency and sent the funds to accounts the ringleader specified. Police caught the gang trading in Bo De Ward six months after the investigation began, seizing five kilograms on the spot along with other evidence.

Read more: VnExpress

The Dissent Now Fits in an Emoji

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Facebook users have settled on a censorship workaround that needs no words. The Haha reaction, dropped en masse beneath official government posts, now shows anything from sarcasm to outright disbelief. The trend has been on the rise for the past six months as authorities worked on better enforcement of content that they considered to be false or “harmful to public order.” Direct comment wars and political meme threads have largely given way to private groups, deleted posts, and a reaction that both says nothing, and everything. Haha!

$76 for the Second Baby

A new mandate that goes into effect on the first day of July will provide some women VND2 million (~$76), for having two children. Local government budgets will be picking up the tab. The payment applies to ethnic minority women from very small population groups, residents of provinces with below-replacement fertility, and anyone hitting the two-child mark before age 35. The decree also expands prenatal screening to four conditions including Down syndrome and Thalassemia, and newborns will now get routinely checked for a handful of congenital issues.

Read more: VnExpress

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share The Mekong Memo

Vietnam 20260514

August Whitcraft — Thu, 14 May 2026 03:20:43 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Vuong Sells VinFast to Himself

VinFast filed with the SEC on Tuesday to sell its entire Vietnamese manufacturing footprint, two factories in Hai Phong and Ha Tinh with combined yearly capacity of 500,000 cars and 500,000 electric motorcycles, to a buyer consortium for $530 million. The buyers are Tuong Lai (formerly Novatech, purchased by VinFast founder Pham Nhat Vuong for $1.6 billion in 2025) with 49 percent, Ngoc Quy Investment and Trading Development with 46.5 percent (its five Vietnamese shareholders described as business partners of Vuong), and Vuong himself at 4.4 percent. VinFast will keep R&D, IP, brand, and sales. Those factories will then make VinFast vehicles under a cost-plus contract. Of the $530 million, about $405 million would go straight back to retire a non-interest-bearing promissory note owed to Vingroup and Vietnam Investment Group, both controlled by Vuong. The new will take over $7.3 billion in manufacturing liabilities that would thereby disappear from VinFast's consolidated balance sheet. Shareholders will vote on the deal at a virtual extraordinary meeting on May 27.

Read more: TechNode Global (Q3 timeline), NDTV (profitability 2027), Economic Times (asset-light model),

Hanoi Asks Washington for a Hormuz Hall Pass

PetroVietnam Oil wrote directly to US Naval Forces Central Command asking the US Navy to let the Agios Fanourios I through the Hormuz blockade. The ask shows how Vietnem’s energy supply chain has become. The tanker holds just under 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude, enough to run the Nghi Son refinery for ten days. US Central Command turned the vessel around anyway, saying the blockade applies to any ship going to or from Iranian ports, a category the Agios Fanourios I apparently tripped despite loading its cargo in Iraq. PetroVietnam's letter said the shipment was "of extreme importance to Nghi Son Refinery, to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and to the Vietnamese people," and explained that further delay risked bringing a stop to refinery throughput. The dong slipped against the dollar on Monday after Trump rejected Iran's latest response to peace proposals.

Read more: SCMP (consumer impact), VnExpress (dong exchange rates)

The Upgrade With a Checklist

FTSE Russell's April confirmation that Vietnam will upgrade from Frontier to Secondary Growing Market status in September comes with up to $6 billion in expected inflows on its heels, but the catch is what comes with it. The 14th Party Congress, which closed in January has shifted the bureaucratic culture. Officials who spent years dodging sign-offs to stay out of anti-corruption crosshairs are now being told to "dare to act and dare to take responsibility." This means that scrutiny’s being front-loaded, and incomplete proposals are going to hit walls early instead of taking advantage of the informal workaround of adjusting projects post-approval and papering the deals over after the fact (as has been the traditional case). HCMC FDI in the first four months of 2026 was nearly $3.3 billion, up 127.1% compared to last year.

Read more: Ionanalytics (compliance standards), VnEconomy (HCM City FDI)

Hanoi Picks a Fight With Motorbikes

Hanoi's People's Council is considering a draft resolution that would ban gasoline-powered motorcycles from 11 streets in central Hoan Kiem Ward on weekends and Friday evenings starting July 1, with ride-hailing bikes cut off entirely. The detail mentioned (presumably in small print) near the bottom of the city's proposal is that gasoline motorcycles make up as much as 97 percent of vehicles in the affected wards. The zone would expand to Cua Nam Ward in 2027 and cover all nine wards inside Ring Road 1 by 2028-2029. Officials want tax breaks, registration fee exemptions, and charging infrastructure to smooth the transition.

Crypto Cowboys Come Indoors

Five local firms, including Techcombank's exchange arm and a VPBank-connected venture backed by OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital, have passed the first licensing round for what could be Vietnam's first regulated crypto market (hoped for by Q3). The rules come with a 0.1% transaction tax and capital requirements of roughly $408 million, about triple what banks are required to hold. Traders on offshore platforms like Binance, Bybit, and OKX, who have opened an estimated 20 million wallets, have six months to link them to a government-approved exchange or face criminal penalties.

Read more: Mexc (licensed firms), Mexc (transaction volume)

Drill First, Assess Later

Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment wants to exempt all crude oil and natural gas extraction projects from Environmental Impact Assessments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the proposal has been arrived at in consultation with Petrovietnam. Murphy Oil spent roughly $39 million in Vietnamese waters last quarter, its Hai Su Vang discovery holds estimated recoverable reserves of more than 430 million barrels of oil equivalent, and the floating storage vessel for Lac Da Vang is set for Q3 delivery with first oil by Q4. The draft law tries to sell the EIA carve-out as a "flexibility-first" proposal, leaving the technical details to the government and "competent authorities" to work out later. Hmmm. Surely nothing could go wrong.

Read more: VnEconomy (EIA exemption), The Investor (Murphy reserves, timeline)

Airlines Suddenly Love the Status Quo

The Ministry of Construction wants to lift the foreign ownership cap in Vietnamese airlines from 34% to 49%, and the two carriers best positioned to tap that fresh capital are fighting hardest to kill the idea. Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet both proposed keeping the 34% ceiling, and the Ministry of Justice chimed in to suggest "prudence." The drafting agency wasn't impressed. Domestic airlines haven't even filled the existing 34% cap, so there's no real evidence the current limit is doing anything but keeping competitors out. Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Brazil and China all allow up to 49%.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review

Four Keys to the Sky

Vietnam gave Elon Musk’s Starlink service the go-ahead on April 1 for a five-year pilot that’s limited to 600,000 subscribers, and requires four domestic gateway stations in three locations (Phu Tho, Da Nang, and two sites in HCMC). Hanoi's official rationale for the gateways is latency and cybersecurity compliance, both technically defensible, but the practical effect is that Starlink traffic is going to flow through facilities under Vietnamese watch until at least January 2031.

Qualcomm Moves Up the Vietnamese Food Chain

Qualcomm opened an expanded Hanoi R&D center on May 12, with CTO Baaziz Achour on hand to celebrate the growth past the AI-focused mandate announced in 2025. The new operation brings system-on-chip design into play, and plans are to extend that into the automotive and IoT domains. Vietnamese engineers are expected to work directly on chip development right beside Qualcomm's existing global teams. In a nod to the significance of the deal, reps from both Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology and the US Embassy showed up for the ribbon-cutting.

Read more: Nikkei Asia (talent race), Vietnam Insiders (deputy minister quotes)

To Lam's Colombo Stop Comes With a Flight

Vietnam Airlines will fly Ho Chi Minh City to Colombo three times a week starting in October, using A321s on a schedule that will cut out the Bangkok/ Kuala Lumpur layovers that currently plague anyone moving goods or people between the two countries. The route was announced during To Lam's state visit/ May 8 summit to Sri Lanka, where he and President Dissanayake bumped the relationship up to "complete partnership" and put a $1 billion two-way trade target on the table. Trade isn't there yet, but textile and agricultural business travel has been on the rise. The October launch will slot in neatly with South Asia's peak tourist season.

Read more: VnEconomy (partnership summit), Aviation Direct (flight schedule)

Sidewalk Crackdown Changes Face of the City

Plan 332, a three-phase program, is pushing the famous tables off Nha Chung, O Quan Chuong, and Hang Chieu streetsides, and forcing vendors on Nguyen Thien Thuat away from the road. One lemon tea shop on Nha Chung says that customer numbers are down 70%, and is moving to online sales in order to try and make up the gap. Cafe owner Nguyen Thanh Ha has moved seating indoors to comply, but says that customers come for the sidewalk atmosphere of the Old Quarter, and four walls don't cut it. End of an era?

Read more: VnExpress

Ninh Binh Bets $5 Billion on Never Sleeping

Ninh Binh province is to break ground late this year on a 1,000-hectare, $5 billion complex built around a "Sleepless City" entertainment hub, a 6-kilometer FIA-standard F1 track, and up to 20,000 luxury hotel rooms. The province pulled in just under 20 million visitors last year and is apparently not interested in stopping there.

Vietnam 20260507

August Whitcraft — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:10:24 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

To Lam Brings Six Politburo Members, Leaves With a BrahMos (Maybe)

To Lam went to New Delhi for his first state visit as Vietnam's president, and the way he turned up about a month after his re-election with a delegation of Politburo heavyweights makes it clear that this was more than a courtesy call. He and Modi upgraded bilateral ties to an “Enhanced Complete Strategic Partnership,” put their signatures on 13 agreements, and set a $25 billion trade target for 2030 (from about $16 billion today). The commercial substance involves rare earths, pharma market access, and rails for a financial link between India's UPI and Vietnam's fast payment network. India offered maintenance and overhaul support for Hanoi's Sukhoi-30s and Kilo-class submarines, and when asked directly about BrahMos cruise missiles, the Ministry of External Affairs' P. Kumaran told reporters, "watch this space." India has already sold BrahMos to the Philippines and closed a deal with Indonesia. Vietnam, which has shown interest in the shore-based anti-ship variant for South China Sea coastal defense, is rumored to be next in the queue.

Read more: SCMP (hedging superpowers), Indian Express (partnership elevation), Economic Times (UPI-Vietnam), Cambodianess ($700M BrahMos), The Tribune (MRO, patrol boats)

Takaichi's Hanoi Encore: Chips, Space, a $60 Billion Clock

Sanae Takaichi picked Hanoi for her first Southeast Asian stop after being elected as Japan's first female PM, and she didn't come empty-handed. Her three-day visit resulted in six signed agreements in space, infrastructure, irrigation, disaster resilience, and climate, as well as a chip-engineer program and a commitment to absorb about half of the 500 doctoral students that Hanoi wants trained in semiconductor-related tech by 2030. The headline numbers are $5 billion in annual Japanese investment and $60 billion of two-way trade, both officially by 2030, but the Japanese Embassy thinks $60 billion is reachable by next year given that trade already cleared $51.4 billion in 2025 and was up 12.7% in Q1.

Read more: VnExpress (ODA ranking), Eurasia Review (Takaichi meetings), VnExpress ($60B timeline), VnExpress (POWERR Asia)

Moody's Warms Up to Hanoi

Moody's bumped the Vietnam outlook from stable to positive even as it kept its Ba2 rating in place. The improvement is being credited to governance reforms that have been rolling out since late 2024 and a less-than-feared damage from US trade measures. The agency said that a broad-based export base, recovering domestic demand, and regular FDI inflows provide a needed underpinning of the credit profile. Banking sector risks, real estate vulnerabilities, and institutional bottlenecks are still standing between the status quo and a more substantive upgrade.

Customs Puts Rare Earths Behind the Counter

Vietnam Customs published Official Dispatch No.15912/CHQ-GSQL, which requires a physical inspection of every rare earth export shipment and forces exporters to declare mine origin, mining licenses, recovery permits, and extraction details at the customs declaration stage. Trading companies that haven’t done the digging themselves will now need to show domestic purchase contracts and invoices to prove a chain of custody.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review

Hanoi Picks Ten Workhorses

Decision No.21/2026/QD-TTg, signed April 30 and taking effect July 1, designates ten technology groups as being “strategic.” The focus list is for digital tech (including AI, cloud, IoT and blockchain), semiconductors, “next-generation” mobile networks, robotics, advanced biotech, energy and materials, cybersecurity and quantum, marine and subsurface, aerospace, and high-speed rail. The list will probably be a good indication about how the state wants resources allocated, and is giving a hint to investors about which sectors are going to see preferential treatment. Intel is already reading the room, as it sent donated equipment to Saigon Hi-Tech Park and Vietnam National University Hanoi to support training for chip packaging and the testing of engineers.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (two product groups), Vietnam Investment Review (Intel headcounts)

Hanoi Finds Religion on Piracy, Right on Cue

A 24-day crackdown on pirated films, music, and counterfeit goods kicks off today, and agencies have been told to find at least 20% more violations than they did in May of last year. Deputy Prime Minister Ho Quoc Dung issued the order that tells police, customs, border guards, and market surveillance organs to work together. Washington has designated Vietnam a "Priority Foreign Country" in its latest IP enforcement report, flagging "persistent failure" on a trade relationship that currently has Vietnam's surplus with the US bigger than China's. Hanoi's foreign ministry has asked for an "objective assessment" of its (apparently renewed) efforts.

Read more: VnExpress (ministry roles), Japan Times (tariff threat), VnExpress (Hanoi rebuttal)

Incumbents Pull Up the Ladder

VinFast, Thaco, and TC Group have asked the Prime Minister to keep auto manufacturing in the "conditional business" category. That request is in opposition to a Finance Ministry proposal that would remove licensing requirements for vehicle production, assembly, and imports. The three incumbents insist that the rules are needed for consumer safety and technical accountability, not market insulation (pearl-clutching!). They say that factory standards, warranty infrastructure, and spare-parts networks are necessary safeguards rather than red tape. In their defense, however, it seems that the Ministry of Industry and Trade is also wary, and has gone on record to say that deregulation could invite Chinese producers to move low-value assembly into Vietnam to get around rules of origin (a shift that would likely result in trade investigations). The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the other hand, has been supportive of the Finance Ministry's path.

Hanoi Trims 890 Pieces of Red Tape

Eight government resolutions have resulted in the scrapping of 890 business conditions, removed 184 administrative procedures, and simplified up to 394 more. Compliance time and costs are expected to be reduced by half compared to the 2024 burden, with the trend being a move away from pre-approval toward post-supervision review.

Pham Nhat Vuong Builds the Nation So the Nation Doesn't Have to

VinSpeed broke ground last month on a 120-kilometer high-speed rail line that will run from Hanoi to Ha Long. The trip in promised in less than 30 minutes at a cost of $5.59 billion, privately funded except for $390 million in state-covered site clearance. That is in addition to a $53 billion Olympic sports park that Vingroup is building in southern Hanoi, anchored by a 135,000-seat stadium shaped like a Dong Son drum. On paper that, that would best India's Narendra Modi Stadium by 3,000 seats and rival Pyongyang's Rungrado. Both projects feed into To Lam's $280 billion infrastructure push, which resulted in the announcement of breaking of ground on 550 projects last year. Vingroup pulled its bid for the $94 billion Hanoi-to-Ho Chi Minh City bullet train in December.

Read more: VnExpress (completion timeline), ABC (stadium roof, GDP target)

Forty Thousand Stores, Now Hunting Number Forty Thousand and One

Meiyijia, China's 40,000-store convenience chain, has opened three Hanoi locations under a new overseas brand called Ohmee, its first retail outposts outside China. The company crossed the 20,000 store count in 2020 and then doubled that again in less than five years, and it plans to run the same franchise playbook abroad that helped it succeed in China. The competition in Vietnam isn't soft, though, as Circle K, GS25, and FamilyMart together take in more than nearly three-quarters of convenience store revenue between them. The top operators have been fortifying their positions through what one local research outfit calls a "flight to quality."

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review

Kredivo Buys Vietnam's Original Neobank

Indonesia's Kredivo Group has bought Timo Digital Bank, Vietnam's first digital banking platform. The fintech already runs buy-now-pay-later and personal loans in Vietnam through local banking partners, but its acquisition of a full-service retail bank will let it do more with its credit products. Founded in 2015, Timo was developed by BV Bank. Phoenix Holdings and VinaCapital are expected to stay on as minority shareholders, Phoenix chairman Henry Nguyen, VinaCapital CEO Don Lam, and VinaCapital asset management CEO Brook Taylor will be added to the Kredivo Vietnam board.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share The Mekong Memo

Vietnam 20260430

August Whitcraft — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 02:43:26 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Headlines:

The Conglomerate King Joins the $60 Billion Club

Tokyo Brings Its Own Checkbook to Hanoi

Seoul's Hanoi Haul: Won, Dong, and a Reactor Deal

Maersk Plants a Flag in Da Nang

Two Vietnams, One GDP Number

Bond Market's Back, Same Four Names

Keppel Drags Thu Thiem Partners to Singapore

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Finally Pour Some Concrete

Old Quarter Goes Quiet on Weekends

Manhattan Comes at a Price

The Conglomerate King Joins the $60 Billion Club

Vingroup got to a $60 billion market cap this week, the first Vietnamese company to crack Southeast Asia's top four, behind Singapore's DBS ($126.5B), Thailand's Delta Electronics ($100B), and Singapore's OCBC ($76B). The conglomerate that Pham Nhat Vuong started in Ukraine in 1993 is now worth more than any of Kia, Nintendo, and Panasonic. Profits are up 150% on revenues of VND104.3 trillion, property contributing VND60.2 trillion, and VinFast another VND28 trillion. The EV unit delivered 58,600 cars in the quarter, up 61%, as well as 143,000 motorbikes, three times what it did a year ago. Vuong's personal fortune is now estimated to be $34.9 billion, a 23% bump since the end of last year. Vingroup shares are up roughly 29% year-to-date in 2026 after rising more than seven-fold in 2025.

Read more: VnExpress (Vuong net worth), VnExpress (regional ranking), VnExpress (Q1 revenue breakdown)

Tokyo Brings Its Own Checkbook to Hanoi

Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first female prime minister, lands in Hanoi tomorrow for her first visit since taking office in October. Japan has 5,722 active investment projects in Vietnam worth $78.9 billion, bilateral trade was $51.43 billion in 2025 (should be ~$60 billion by 2027), and Q1 trade is running 12.7% ahead of last year. The agenda is energy, critical minerals, and semiconductor talent. Running alongside the visit, Nishi-Nippon Railroad has changed the way it works from deal-by-deal collaboration with Nam Long ADC into a formal joint venture, taking a 49% stake to help build housing. Takaichi is scheduled to meet President To Lam and PM Pham Minh Chinh on Saturday.

Read more: Kyodo News (Australia leg), VnExpress (JV for housing), VnExpress (semiconductor talent), VnEconomy (ambassador commitment)

Seoul's Hanoi Haul: Won, Dong, and a Reactor Deal

Korean President Lee Jae Myung finished his Hanoi visit on April 24 with three deliverables built on groundwork that had been previously set during To Lam's trip to Seoul last August. The most immediately visible is a live cross-border QR payment system that hooks Korean apps into Vietnam's VietQR Global network, allowing for direct won-to-dong payments. Longer in the making is a four-party MOU on nuclear energy, putting Korea Eximbank, Korea Trade Insurance Corporation, KEPCO, and Petrovietnam under the same financing setup. Eximbank chairman Hwang Ki-yeon says it’s "an important starting point for Korean companies to build a strong presence" in the sector. The central bank of Vietnam has licensed Industrial Bank of Korea to set up a wholly foreign-owned subsidiary in the first new bank approval, foreign or domestic, since 2008. IBK is now the third Korean lender with full local incorporation after Shinhan and Woori.

Read more: VnEconomy (73 MOUs signed), VnEconomy (QR merchant scale), Solarquarter (Petrovietnam chairman), Fintech Global (GLN app list), VnEconomy (Banking)

Maersk Plants a Flag in Da Nang

On April 25, a Hateco-APM Terminals joint venture broke ground on the Lien Chieu Container Terminal in Da Nang, a $2 billion-or-so project that will add 5.7 million TEU of yearly capacity to a coastline that punches well below its weight. Eight berths will eventually be able to handle vessels up to 18,000 TEU. Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc flew in for the ceremony and started the clock, promising the first vessels in 30 months. He also dangled a comparison to Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia, where Maersk runs port operations that are integrated with a free trade zone, a model that Da Nang has on paper, even if the finer details for its own FTZ are still being worked out. The state has promised nearly VND 3.5 trillion in public money for shared infrastructure, including a national railway connection that’s still being designed.

Read more: VnEconomy (green port tech), VnExpress (cargo tonnage), VnEconomy (To Lam targets), VnEconomy (FTZ framework)

Two Vietnams, One GDP Number

Q1 growth results are in at 7.83 percent, the best opening quarter in years, and Hanoi has every reason to celebrate. Foreign-invested factories were responsible for more than four-fifths of the total and posted $98.46 billion in exports. Domestic firms managed only $24.47 billion, which is a figure that’s actually down 16.6 percent - so the foreign firms are doing the heavy lifting, for sure. Despite the solid overall numbers, reports are coming that the SMEs that employ more than 80 percent of the workforce and generate close to half of GDP are getting antsy about cash - only 20 to 25 percent say they are currently able to get a bank loan. Core inflation was reported to be 3.96 percent year-on-year through March.

Read more: Vietnam News (SME credit access), VnEconomy (Q1 GDP breakdown)

Bond Market's Back, Same Four Names

Vietnam's private corporate bond market raised VND46.74 trillion ($1.77 billion) in the first four months of 2026, as compared to VND30.07 trillion a year earlier. Real estate companies claimed four-fifths of the cash. Four conglomerates took nearly all of it: Masterise-linked entities (VND13.6 trillion), Vingroup (VND10.5 trillion), Sovico (VND10.2 trillion), and Sun Group (VND3.1 trillion). Sovico's haul came almost entirely from a single 10-year tranche by Marina Center Investment, backed by the Marina Central Tower project in Ho Chi Minh City with a 4% coupon. Vinhomes priced two tranches totaling VND7.5 trillion at coupons of 12% to 12.5%. Banks, which commanded more than two-thirds of issuance in early 2024, have continued making a move toward public offerings, leaving the private market to property issuers.

Read more: The Investor

Keppel Drags Thu Thiem Partners to Singapore

Keppel has dragged its three Vietnamese partners into arbitration at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, trying to pin the full $261 million in surprise land use fees from the long-frozen Empire City project on Denver Power, Tien Phuoc Real Estate, and Tran Thai Lands. The fees, handed out by HCMC authorities, have since snowballed. Empire City LLC now has $264.69 million in tax liabilities, penalties, and late fees; $62.56 million is more than 90 days overdue. Construction started in 2017 and was able to deliver about 1,200 apartments before stalling in 2019.

Read more: The Investor

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Finally Pour Some Concrete

Three infrastructure milestones have arrived in the same news cycle, and for once they're groundbreakings, not feasibility studies. Ho Chi Minh City broke ground April 29 on a $1.4 billion metro line that will dig under the Saigon River, connecting Ben Thanh market to Thu Thiem on driverless trains, with the full Tham Luong-Ben Thanh-Thu Thiem axis of Line 2 expected (hoped for?) by 2030. The same day, nearly 200km of North-South Expressway opened from Quang Ngai toward the Cu Mong Tunnel, after a VND21.1 trillion ($802 million) build that started at the beginning of 2023. In the north, bulldozers cleared Lane 310 on Nghi Tam Street last week as Hanoi pushes land clearance for the $760 million Tu Lien Bridge to cross the Red River. Completion of that project is expected next year.

Read more: Vietnam News (resident displacement), VnExpress (station names, GoA4), VnEconomy (opening time, speed limit)

Old Quarter Goes Quiet on Weekends

Starting July 1, Hanoi will bar gasoline-powered motorbikes from 11 streets in the Old Quarter on Friday evenings and through the weekend, the first move in a three-phase plan that is expected to eventually cover the entire Ring Road 1 area by end-2029. That’s an area of roughly 26 square kilometers which is home to about 625,000 people. Phase 1 restrictions run Friday 6 p.m. to midnight and Saturday and Sunday 6 a.m. to midnight, with ride-hailing platforms explicitly included, not just private bikes. Transport makes up 59 percent of the city's direct emissions. Light trucks under two tons need Euro 4 certification to operate outside peak hours, and anything more than 3.5 tons is banned outright. Phase 2 will expand the plan into Cua Nam ward next January, adding 14 streets.

Read more: VnExpress (PM2.5 sources), VnEconomy (nine affected wards)

Manhattan Comes at a Price

Vietnamese state media reported on March 26 that all households in Ho Chi Minh City's Thu Thiem New Urban Area had "agreed to move." Videos circulating on social media told a different story, with police sealing streets for days, water and electricity cut off, internet disabled, and residents livestreaming evictions before the feeds went dark. Nearly 15,000 households have been cleared from the 657-hectare peninsula across the Saigon River from District 1, billed as the "Manhattan of Vietnam" which is being designed to eventually house up to 145,000 residents and absorb a million visitors at peak events. Several religious and historic structures have already been taken down, roughly 5,000 households remain.

Vietnam 20260423

August Whitcraft — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 02:48:31 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe now

The Mekong Memo is proudly presented by:

Please go to https://www.mekongmemo.com/account to select country editions you would like to receive without affecting your overall subscription status.

Headlines:

Hormuz Headache

Seoul Brings the Checkbook to Hanoi

One Chair, Two Hats, Beijing Playbook

Vuong Bets the Farm, Twice

Mega-Projects Can't Find the Hands to Build Them

The Tortoise Laps the Hare

Saigon Offers $190 for Baby Number Two

Tsinghua or Bust

Milk Tea Hits the Ceiling

Diaspora Dollars Dry Up in Saigon

Americans Take the Whole Terminal

Forty Is the New Unemployable

Hormuz Headache

Brent crude tipped $115.6 a barrel and Vietnam is feeling every dollar of it. Diesel rose more than 57% in March, dragging asphalt up almost a third, cement up more than 7%, and cost estimates for major transport projects up by about 8%. Aviation is taking the biggest beating. Vietnam Airlines says jet fuel, normally around a third of its cost base, now consumes half, and each $1 rise in crude adds VND300 billion (~$11.4M) to annual costs. Hanoi is scrambling. The Airports Corporation is looking at fee cuts, Hai Phong zeroed out port infrastructure fees on fuel shipments through the end of the year, the government added VND8 trillion to the fuel subsidy fund, and lawmakers have waived environmental, VAT and special consumption taxes on fuel from April 16 to June 30, at a cost of VND7.3 trillion a month. HSBC's Yun Liu says the 10% full-year growth target is in doubt if energy prices stay as they are; Vietnam gets roughly four-fifths of its crude from the Middle East.

Read more: VnEconomy (fertilizer price), VnEconomy (jet fuel), VnEconomy (fee waiver), VnExpress (reserve buffer)

Seoul Brings the Checkbook to Hanoi

Lee Jae-myung landed in Hanoi as the first foreign leader received by To Lam since his “elevation,” and the two men wasted little time getting down to business. Twelve MOUs resulted from the summit, the headline items being two nuclear agreements between Korea Electric Power Corporation and Vietnam's state energy group for feasibility studies and financing for Ninh Thuan No. 2. It might be worth remembering that’s a plant Japan walked away from because the 2035 timeline was too tight. Hyundai Rotem is expected to sign a ~$110 million contract for metro cars on Ho Chi Minh City's urban rail line; Korean firms are also in talks for a $740 million project in a “southeastern city” and a consulting role on Gia Binh airport. Samsung's talks on a back-end semiconductor plant have made progress, though the size of any deal is still up in the air. Bilateral trade was $94.6 billion last year; the two sides want to see that get to $150 billion by 2030, and both think that’s a realistic target.

Read more: Yonhap (summit), Korea Herald (aid center), Internazionale (Samsung investment), Chosun (KRW contract), Yonhap (KEPCO partner)

One Chair, Two Hats, Beijing Playbook

The National Assembly voted unanimously to give To Lam the state presidency on top of the party general secretaryship he already holds, bending the "four pillars" convention that’s kept power separated between four offices for decades. The last man to wear both hats was Nguyen Phu Trong, who combined them from 2018 to 2021 before being pressured to step back from the presidency. To Lam, confirmed in January for another five-year term as party chief, is treating the double role as a mandate more than a stopgap. A former public security minister who made his name enforcing Trong's anti-corruption purges, among other things, he is now openly studying China's surveillance model and further bilateral security agreements are expected.

Vuong Bets the Farm, Twice

Pham Nhat Vuong told VinFast shareholders on April 22 that the company will never build a gasoline or hybrid car. The stake in the ground was laid even as other automakers are walking back their EV timelines. The numbers are split. 2025 revenue was more than VND 90 trillion, up 139% on 2024, with net losses of more than VND 97 trillion. VinFast has a bit more than a third of Vietnam's car market, sister company Green SM controls more than half of four-wheel ride-hailing by transaction value, and its charging network numbers 150,000 ports nationwide. For 2026, Vuong wants to deliver 300,000 cars globally, about a third of that number outside Vietnam, which would be a fivefold rise on last year's exports. He expects EBITDA profitability in 2027.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (Green SM IPO), VnEconomy (charging infrastructure), Nikkei Asia (export jump)

Mega-Projects Can't Find the Hands to Build Them

Long Thanh Airport is 6,000 workers short of the 14,000 it needs, with about 8,500 engineers and laborers on site as of mid-April. The 115-meter passenger terminal that contractors call the project's "heart" has seen daily headcount collapse from about 5,300 before Tet to 1,500, recovering to just 3,400 measured against a need of closer to 6,000. Down at Phu Quoc, where 21 projects tied to APEC 2027 are racing against the same clock, the situation is even worse. One contractor on the Sun Group-led convention center says its workforce is only 30-40% of demand, and AIT, wiring a 220kV substation that has to be live before November 2027, has pushed daily wages to around VND800,000 (US$30), 30-40% above what it had penciled in when it signed the deal. "At this stage we're not calculating profit or loss," said AIT's Dang Xuan Minh. Contractors are now recruiting on basic physical fitness alone, covering travel and meals, paying standby retainers to workers with nothing yet to do, and running three continuous shifts. Fewer young Vietnamese are taking heavy construction work, and a packed southern pipeline, including the Bien Hoa-Vung Tau and HCMC-Long Thanh expressways, means every new project needs to pull workers from the same shallow pool.

Read more: VnExpress (cost escalation), VnExpress (headcounts)

The Tortoise Laps the Hare

Vietnam has officially passed Thailand in PPP-adjusted GDP, hitting $2.03 trillion in the IMF's April 2026 World Economic Outlook. Nominal GDP came in at $527 billion - that’s 34th globally - on 7.1% growth. None of this news is a tremendous surprise to anyone on the ground. A CPA Australia survey of 4,166 firms in 11 Asia-Pacific markets found almost nine-in-ten small businesses in Vietnam are planning expansion in 2026, the highest number of any market polled. The regional average was about two-thirds of companies.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (PPP/GDP), VnEconomy (SME survey)

Saigon Offers $190 for Baby Number Two

Ho Chi Minh City has doled out VND5 million ($190) to each of 1,310 mothers who have given birth to a second child since September, after health officials declared a demographic "red alert" because of a fertility rate of 1.51, the lowest of any locality in Vietnam. An earlier cohort of 7,650 women got VND3 million apiece under an earlier scheme that ran in the pre-merger city. The payments come ahead of a new Population Law (July 1), which will formally do away with the country's two-child “limit.” For context, Singapore's Baby Bonus pays SGD11,000 ($8,300) per child for the first two, and South Korea gives parents 2 million won ($1,500) at birth and 3 million won on the birth of a second child, on top of years of monthly allowances. Neither country's fertility rate has budged, however.

Read more: VnExpress

Tsinghua or Bust

To Lam's April 14-17 Beijing visit resulted in 52 university cooperation agreements, with Tsinghua and Peking University each signing nine deals with Vietnamese institutions for things including double degrees, doctoral training, and joint research. Hanoi University of Science and Technology anchored its Peking deal on engineering and data science; Vietnam National University Hanoi went to Tsinghua for political science, international relations and linguistics.

Read more: VnExpress (institutional turnout)

Milk Tea Hits the Ceiling

Mixue closed 428 stores globally last year, with Indonesia and Vietnam, its two biggest overseas markets, absorbing much of the pain. The closures come as a 3,000-person iPOS survey in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi shows out-of-home coffee and milk tea visits plateauing. Almost two-fifths of respondents drank out at most twice a week last year, up from a third in 2024. The VND35,000 to 50,000 band is now the market's power band, as well as its most crowded. Mixue's VND10,000 to 30,000 pricing play built the mass market, but it seems that the mass market has decided it's full. The chain had 1,304 Vietnam stores in Q4, but now wants to rationalize the footprint to fewer, bigger, better-located outlets with bigger prep counters and street-facing storefronts.

Read more: VnExpress (revenue/profits), VnExpress (consumer spending)

Diaspora Dollars Dry Up in Saigon

Remittances to Ho Chi Minh City fell to just over $2 billion in Q1 2026, down almost a sixth from the previous quarter and almost a fifth from a year earlier, according to the State Bank of Vietnam's Region 2 branch. The headline reasons are familiar: a sluggish global recovery, sticky inflation in the countries where overseas Vietnamese earn their money, tight monetary policy abroad, and the Middle East conflict pushing up energy spending. The quieter admission is domestic. The dong-dollar interest rate gap has narrowed to a point that sending money to Vietnam now feels less rewarding, and local investment products haven't given the diaspora a compelling reason to put capital to work at home.

Read more: VnExpress (official attribution), VnEconomy (city recovery)

Americans Take the Whole Terminal

AG&P LNG has agreed to buy Hai Linh's 51% stake in the Cai Mep LNG import terminal in Vung Tau province, giving US-based Nebula Energy full ownership of one of only two operational LNG import facilities in Vietnam. AG&P already owned the other 49%. The terminal, connected by pipeline to the 3.9-gigawatt Phu My power station, has been supplying gas-fired plants and industrial customers in southern Vietnam since late 2025. AG&P wants to double throughput from 3 million to 6 million tonnes annually. Hai Linh says it's going to redirect capital to its core petroleum business and the Hiep Phuoc power project. The deal is pending regulatory approval.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (storage specs), Gasworld (global network)

Forty Is the New Unemployable

Ho Chi Minh City's Q1 labor market had 82,700 open positions chasing just 52,600 applicants, yet workers aged 36-49, the largest applicant pool (almost 21,000 people), were targeted by a measly 0.32% of postings. Industrial park and export-zone employers want workers under 35, because they are seen as more adaptable to shift work and new machinery. More than four-fifths of required no more than a high school education.

Read more: VnExpress

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.

Subscribe now

Share The Mekong Memo