The Mekong Memo: Vietnam

Vietnam 20260423

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

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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

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Vietnam 20260416

August Whitcraft — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:25:32 GMT

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Headlines:

Beijing First

Geneva Bets Five Billion on Saigon

Hanoi Gets the Index Stamp

Vingroup Lays Track on a $5.6 Billion Bet

Circuit Board, Tariff Dodge

Korea Inc. Goes Shopping in Hanoi

Hanoi Takes a Machete to Red Tape

All Levers, All at Once

Graves Move First, Farmers Next

Grab's Second Bite at the Apple

Beijing First

Less than a week after consolidating the presidency and party general secretary roles, To Lam flew to Beijing on Tuesday for his first overseas trip as president and party chief, meeting Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. Xi told him that safeguarding the socialist system and Communist Party rule "constitutes the largest shared strategic interest" between the two countries, blunt language even by the standards of Communist fraternal summitry. The two sides signed cooperation deals on railways, logistics, and the leasing of Comac aircraft, with Li promising to speed up infrastructure connectivity in standard-gauge railways, expressways, and smart ports and to create "secure and stable" supply chains. Xi also indicated an intention to further cooperate in AI and semiconductors. Bilateral trade was $256 billion in 2025, rising at a 25 percent clip last year; Hanoi runs a deficit approaching $100 billion. Lam wrote in People's Daily that the relationship should change from growing trade volume to improving the quality of cooperation, and told Xi that developing relations with China remains the country's "objective need, strategic choice and top priority."

Read more: Independent, Club of Mozambique (trade figure), TRT World (quality over volume), Xinhua (Li Qiang promise)

Geneva Bets Five Billion on Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City approved MSC, the world's largest container shipping line, as the lead investor in a $4.9 billion mega-port at Can Gio, and groundbreaking is scheduled for April 30. The Geneva-based carrier moves 23 million TEU yearly including more than a million TEU of Vietnamese goods to the U.S., Europe and Asia through terminals in Hai Phong, Da Nang and Cai Mep. This will be an anchor at the mouth of the Cai Mep River that will be able to handle 4.8 million TEU by 2030 and 16.9 million by 2047. It’s expected to include berths built for 24,000-TEU vessels, the largest afloat today. At full capacity, Can Gio is expected to generate up to a billion and a half USD in annual revenue and create 6,000 to 8,000 direct jobs. Cargo that currently goes through Singapore and Port Klang would have a reason to reroute.

Read more: VnExpress

Hanoi Gets the Index Stamp

FTSE Russell again confirmed the upgrade to secondary emerging market status, opening the door to the FTSE All-World Index and its 4,000-plus holdings tracked by passive funds worldwide. Gerald Toledano, leading FTSE Russell's delegation for talks with the State Securities Commission, said upgrades of this kind have been rare in recent years. Authorities are pushing through reforms to meet institutional investor standards and expectations, including the simplification of administrative procedures and the addition of a clearinghouse so trades settle in a way (and in a timeframe) that institutional investors expect them to.

Vingroup Lays Track on a $5.6 Billion Bet

Vingroup broke ground last Sunday on the country's first inter-regional high-speed rail, a $5.6 billion line that will string together Hanoi and Quang Ninh in 23 minutes when it opens late 2028. The 120-kilometer route is expected to hit 350 km/h outside the capital, where speeds will be a reduced to a leisurely 120 km/h. Siemens Mobility is supplying the trainsets and signaling tech in a phased transfer to support building domestic capacity.

Read more: VnEconomy (PM confirmed), Vietnam Insiders (precedent)

Circuit Board, Tariff Dodge

Chinese PCB manufacturer Victory Giant Technology tripled its Vietnam revenue to $473 million in 2025, making up close to a fifth of the company's global sales. The reason this is notable for reader of The Memo is that the increase has come almost entirely in lockstep with tariff math, as Vietnamese-made circuit boards get a U.S. import duty of around 10% compared to a possible 35% for the same goods shipped from China. The company was at pains to remind everyone that Washington's tariff policies "remain subject to unpredictable fluctuations."

Read more: VnEconomy

Korea Inc. Goes Shopping in Hanoi

Lee Jae-yong of Samsung, Chung Euisun of Hyundai, Koo Kwang-mo of LG, and Chey Tae-won of SK are heading a 200-company delegation to Hanoi later this month, looking at opportunities in electronics, automotive, and energy. Samsung makes nearly half its global smartphones in Vietnam, LG runs more than a dozen subsidiaries, and SK is in the process of building a $2.3 billion LNG project. All four of Korea's largest chaebols showing up at once seems a bit like an endorsement.

Hanoi Takes a Machete to Red Tape

Prime Minister Le Minh Hung gave ministries until next Monday to send him plans for cutting at least 30% of the country's 198 conditional business lines, which are about 60 sectors where companies currently need government approval to operate. The sweep also puts the country's 4,603 business conditions in the spotlight, all of those are getting a review by month's end. Ministries must are being told to cut compliance costs and processing times by half while handling no more than 30% of administrative processes themselves - they’re being told to push the rest of the work down to lower levels. Hung told ministers on Monday to personally oversee the cull, saying the cuts are something the government can do now, without waiting for legislative approval.

Read more: VnEconomy

All Levers, All at Once

The State Bank corralled 26 commercial banks into cutting deposit rates after newly installed Governor Pham Duc An's meeting last Thursday. Most reductions will apply to tenors of longer than six months. The wrangling comes as system-wide credit growth was 7.83% in the first quarter, as the central bank's push toward a 15% expansion while trying to keep inflation tame at a 4.5% limit. A fuel tax cut will apply through June 30. Party General Secretary To Lam also once again went on record this week saying that the country's bottleneck "does not lie in the lack of sound policies, but in the capacity to translate those policies into tangible development outcomes."

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Q1 GDP), VnEconomy (disbursement), VnEconomy (Lam quotes), VnEconomy (fuel tax)

Graves Move First, Farmers Next

A Trump Organization golf course in the Red River Delta was fast-tracked by then-Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh just before the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. The course site, about 40 kilometers south of Hanoi, featured toppled cemetery crosses lying in the rain as families worked to relocate their dead in advance of construction. Groundbreaking was May 21, 2025; Pham spoke at a ceremony that drew crowds of local residents, some posing for photos with Americans. According to the Le Monde story, not only did the project displace farmers and graves, but there have also been allegations of corruption in the process.

Grab's Second Bite at the Apple

Grab said it will launch Tap to Pay in 2027 in a bid to turn merchant smartphones into contactless payment terminals using NFC. The feature is intended to appeal to business partners more than consumers, a different strategy from the company's Moca e-wallet, which shut down on the Grab platform in mid-2024. Instead of requiring new point of sale hardware, Tap to Pay would let merchants accept card and QR payments straight from the GrabMerchant app. There are currently 47 licensed e-wallet providers elbowing to grab a piece of a market that already has almost 30 million active wallets.

Read more: VnEconomy

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Vietnam 20260409

August Whitcraft — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:28:15 GMT

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Headlines:

One Man, Two Thrones

Central Banker Gets the Keys (and a 10% Growth Target)

Saigon Bulls Make the Cut

Seven Point Eight Three

Half a Day's Pay at the Pump

Priced Out, Bused Free

Gold Up 800%, Borrower Still Broke

Southeast Asia's Richest Man Won by Staying Put

Build the Island, Then Build More Island

Scan Here, Pay There

One Man, Two Thrones

The National Assembly voted unanimously (495 to zero!) on Tuesday to elect To Lam as state president for the next five years, making the Communist Party general secretary the first leader to hold both jobs at a party congress since Ho Chi Minh. It’s a break from the collective leadership model that has kept the country's top roles split since the 1980s and makes the power structure more similar to that of China. Lam briefly held both posts in 2024 after his predecessor died, but this time he has a full mandate to push the reform agenda he's been running since August. He told lawmakers his priority is double-digit growth driven by science and tech.

Read more: AP News (Q1 growth gap), The Diplomat (2024 precedent), VnExpress (reform numbers), Taipei Times (99% vote share), Yahoo (investor sentiment)

Central Banker Gets the Keys (and a 10% Growth Target)

Le Minh Hung took office as prime minister on April 7, the country's youngest since 1955 and the first central banker to hold the job in decades. The National Assembly's unanimous vote installed a technocrat with a clear brief that calls for an average annual GDP growth rate in excess of 10% through 2031. Hung previously spent four years running the State Bank, building foreign reserves and moving the entire banking sector toward digital services, but his tenure wasn't without blemish. The Van Thinh Phat fraud, one of the largest financial scandals in the country's history, grew on his watch. The credit-to-GDP ratio also went as high as 145% in 2025, triple that of comparable developing economies (Thailand’s is similar, however). The last time leadership pushed this hard for growth (2006-2011), it ended in an asset bubble, a banking crisis, and 23% inflation.

Read more: Vietnam Insiders (decentralization timeline), Fulcrum (energy shortage)

Saigon Bulls Make the Cut

FTSE Russell finally confirmed a long-expected reclassification of Vietnam’s bourse from frontier to Secondary Growing Market status, effective September 21. The VN-Index rose closed last night at 1,756, its highest level since early March, with trading volume of VND33.37 trillion, more than double the prior session and the strongest turnover in almost a month. Foreign investors still sold a net VND602 billion across all exchanges, but if you remove block put-throughs from your math, they were net buyers by roughly VND580 billion.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (MSCI criteria progress), Vietnam Investment Review, The Investor (inflation risks warning), VnExpress (Indonesia comparison context), MSN ($6B inflow estimate)

Seven Point Eight Three

The economy grew 7.83% in Q1, the fastest clip in 16 years, but the headline number obfuscates a growing divergence. Foreign-invested firms saw exports rise 33.3% to $98.46 billion at the same time that domestic companies dropped 16.6% to $24.47 billion. Foreign trade rose 23% to $249.5 billion, yet the country flipped from a $3.57 billion surplus a year ago to a $3.64 billion deficit as imports rose 27% while exports rose only 19.1%. FDI inflows totaled $15.2 billion, up almost 43%. On the ground, retail sales rose 10.9%, international arrivals came in at a record 6.76 million. Another notable divergence was the 57,400 new firms registered, measured against 91,800 that shuttered operations.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (FDI breakdown), VnExpress (macro context), VnExpress (domestic vs FDI), VnEconomy (retail details), VnEconomy (business churn)

Half a Day's Pay at the Pump

As is the story in much of Southeast Asia these days, Vietnamese diesel prices more than doubled and the price of gasoline rose roughly 30% through March, driving consumer inflation to a five-year March high of 4.65% year-on-year. The pain everywhere - gig workers spending half their earnings on fuel, rice millers in the Delta shutting down during peak electricity hours, and farmers skipping the May planting season rather than paying for fertilizer. To fight the challenges, Hanoi dropped environmental taxes on fuel to zero through mid-April, waived transport fees through June, and pushed the Dung Quat refinery to 110% of its normal output. Deputy Minister Nguyen Sinh Nhat Tan said the crisis is worse than the 1970s oil shocks in scale. A two-week U.S.-Iran ceasefire brought prices down slightly, but they’re still well above pre-conflict levels.

Read more: VnExpress (April supply secured), VnEconomy (VLCC mobilization plan), VnEconomy (March CPI breakdown), VnEconomy (June tax extension), New York Times (Rice mills shuttered)

Priced Out, Bused Free

HCMC apartment prices rose 11.8% in Q1 to an average VND97 million/ square meter. Supply below VND40 million has virtually evaporated even in formerly separate Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau, which were folded into the city last July. Almost 90% of new units in central areas are high-end or luxury, and Knight Frank expects the squeeze to continue through 2027 as land scarcity and construction costs mean that upmarket developments are the best way for developers to make the numbers work. Rather than tackling housing costs directly, the city's response, announced Wednesday by Party chief Tran Luu Quang, is to make all 135 intra-city bus routes free. Planners are hopeful the subsidy will result in 30% ridership growth, though they're still figuring out whether the existing 2,100-vehicle fleet can handle the increase. The proposal still needs People's Council approval later this month.

Read more: VnExpress (Knight Frank projections), VnExpress (subsidy cost quintupling)

Gold Up 800%, Borrower Still Broke

A 218.74 kg gold loan worth VND100 billion when it was issued has ballooned to VND891 billion by the end of 2025, and borrower Saigon Aquatic Products Trading can't repay it. The seafood exporter owes VND2.79 trillion in total overdue debts to Sacombank (which absorbed the original lender, Southern Bank), with interest and penalties alone accounting for VND1.56 trillion. Accumulated losses stand at 30 times the company's charter capital. Sacombank sued for VND1.43 trillion in April 2022 and has been trying to auction the debt since, dropping the asking price to VND317 billion in late 2025 with no takers. Auditors are now questioning whether the company, which exports frozen fish, shrimp, and fish sauce to the U.S., EU, and Japan, will be able to continue operating.

Read more: VnExpress

Southeast Asia's Richest Man Won by Staying Put

Pham Nhat Vuong topped Forbes' Southeast Asia rich list at $15.9 billion, overtaking Indonesia's Prajogo Pangestu. Pangestu's fortune cratered after Indonesian authorities questioned stock market transparency, dropping from more than $44 billion to $18.6 billion. Vuong's wealth also slipped nearly $4 billion this year as Vingroup shares cooled, but his family still controls about 65% of the juggernaut. He became the country's first billionaire in 2013 at $1.5 billion, growing his fortune more than sixteen-fold over twelve years.

Read more: VnExpress

Build the Island, Then Build More Island

Kien Giang province wants to reclaim 4,500 hectares of sea off Phu Quoc and the Gulf of Thailand coast, creating four artificial island clusters starting in 2027 and running through 2050. The largest chunk, 2,300 hectares around Phu Quoc and Tho Chau, is planned to be an international entertainment zone with free trade facilities, luxury resorts, and amusement parks. The island already has more than 10,000 hotel rooms under construction; builders are racing to get them done by late 2027 for APEC hosting duties. Provincial officials told planners to start looking for investors now instead of wait for ground to break. Sun PhuQuoc Airways put an order in for “up to” 40 Boeing 787 Dreamliners in February that will be used to fly guests in.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (construction timeline), VnExpress (cluster breakdown), Yahoo Finance (aircraft order)

Scan Here, Pay There

Chinese tourists are now able to scan VIETQRGlobal codes with Alipay at merchants nationwide, settling directly in yuan or dong through a system connecting NAPAS, Ant International, and Vietcombank. The rollout allows for more than a billion Alipay users to use the retail payment network, and means that Vietnamese travelers will be able to pay via QR in China as well. China sent roughly 5.3 million visitors last year, the largest single source of inbound tourism, and the system is designed to keep that spending digital.

Read more: VnEconomy

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.

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Vietnam 20260402

August Whitcraft — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 04:06:12 GMT

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Headlines:

Hormuz Chokehold Hits the Tarmac

Nineteen Ships Want Hormuz Escort

Assembled Here, Designed in Shenzhen

Five Percent for 37 Years

Saigon's Big Dig

200-to-1 Crypto Welcome Mat

Black Market Dollar Gap Widens as Gold Soars

King of Fruits Takes a Beating

Inspector on the Take, Sick Pork on the Plate

Pork Bellies Hit the Trading Floor

Long Bien Holds, Metro Line Folds

Director to Doorman: CGV Pays Up

Tokyo Needs Drivers, Hanoi Has Them

Hormuz Chokehold Hits the Tarmac

Jet fuel went as high as $234 per barrel on March 24, about double pre-conflict levels, and airlines are managing by adding surcharges of up to 17% on the longest domestic routes. Under a plan now in front of the Ministry of Construction, the cost of a Hanoi-Phu Quoc ticket would rise from $152 to $178, and Vietnam Airlines/ Vietjet will cut domestic capacity by up to 26% and 22% respectively starting yesterday, first by dropping late-night and low-demand services entirely. Gasoline prices rose by half and diesel is up 70% since February before the government zeroed out environmental protection taxes, slashed excise and VAT levies, and tapped $304 million from last year's budget surplus to try and bring some relief to the market. The PM is ordering the build-out of a strategic petroleum depot in Thanh Hoa's Nghi Son commune. Currently domestic reserves cover less than 30 days of use, less than what regional peers are sitting on.

Read more: Fulcrum (import dollar figures), VnExpress (ticket surcharge breakdown), VnEconomy (depot construction order), VnExpress (price drops).

Nineteen Ships Want Hormuz Escort

The maritime authority is putting a request in to Iran for the safe passage of 19 ships through the Strait of Hormuz, including four flying Vietnam’s flag and 15 registered under foreign flags. The request includes a formal transit notice from Iran so shippers can get war-risk insurance, which insurers are unwilling to give without Iranian confirmation.

Assembled Here, Designed in Shenzhen

Trump's tariff war has poured fuel on a manufacturing shift, maybe just not the one he had in mind. A Bloomberg analysis of customs data shows that Chinese manufacturers pushed much of their final assembly across the border, but so far have kept core production at home. Some factories are adding less than 8% to export values before shipping onward, leaving total US electronics imports essentially flat. Foxconn subsidiary Fukang Technology, for example exported $8.6 billion in MacBooks, iPads and related motherboards last year, but they imported $7.9 billion in components from China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Five Percent for 37 Years

The new Law on Digital Technology Industry is giving semiconductor manufacturers a 5% corporate tax rate for 37 years, one of the best deals on the planet right now. Projects starting at roughly $231 million qualify, a figure about a fifth less than comparable deals in other priority sectors. The package includes six years of full tax exemption followed by 13 years at half rate, plus five-year income tax holidays for specialized staff. The pitch seems to be working, FDI hit about $38 billion in 2025, up from 2024’s ~$27 billion.

Read more: VnEconomy (tax specifics), Weissratings (FDI figures), VnEconomy (regional context)

Saigon's Big Dig

Ho Chi Minh City has sucked up nearly $2.9 billion in FDI so far this year. The money is coming as the city races to wire together a $20 billion, 187-kilometer metro network by 2030 and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is setting a hard fourth-quarter deadline for Long Thanh International Airport to start commercial flights. Chinh inspected the site on March 29 and told contractors to hustle so they can get construction done by September. Nearly 9,000 workers are on site at Long Thanh. About three quarters of the total contracted value is already done.

Read more: VnEconomy (retail sales data), VnExpress

200-to-1 Crypto Welcome Mat

The Ministry of Finance published a crypto tax framework that gives foreign institutional a 200x tax advantage over domestic ones. By the rules of Circular 32, foreign institutions trading crypto via local service providers need to pay 0.1% on transaction revenue, but domestic companies will be on the hook for a 20% corporate tax on their gains. Individual traders, foreign or local, will also get the 0.1% flat rate. VAT doesn't apply to crypto transfers or trading. The rules will be in force through a pilot that requires exchanges to post roughly VND9.5 trillion (about $390 million) in paid-in capital and limits foreign ownership to 49%. Chainalysis figures that Vietnam processed $220 to $230 billion in on-chain volume between mid-2024 to mid-2025, making it one of the top three markets in Asia-Pacific.

Read more: VnEconomy (VAT exemption), Westafricatradehub (capital requirements)

Black Market Dollar Gap Widens as Gold Soars

The dong is getting squeezed. Unofficial exchange points were unloading dollars for VND27,970, a 6.1% premium over Vietcombank's official rate, as safe-haven flows pushed the greenback toward its biggest monthly gain since July last year. The cost of Saigon Jewelry Company's gold bars this week were trading at VND177.2 million/ tael, a hefty local premium that’s about VND29 million higher than what global prices would indicate the stuff should trade hands for. Savers are apparently on the hunt for hard assets and currency, whatever the markup.

Read more: VnExpress (yen intervention speculation), VnExpress (VND29M premium), VnExpress (13% YTD gains)

King of Fruits Takes a Beating

Durian prices across the Mekong Delta have collapsed 35-40% since late February as the domestic harvest met a Thai production boom. Farmers who bet on export demand are being forced to dump the fruit at home instead. One Dong Thap grower sold her entire orchard for 21% less than she was expecting the month before after waiting for a rebound that never came. Thai growers are reportedly making headway in the Chinese market share by way of meeting higher safety and traceability standards.

Read more: VnExpress

Inspector on the Take, Sick Pork on the Plate

Hanoi police arrested eight scofflaws in mid-March, including meat inspectors, for allowing 300 tons of African Swine Fever-contaminated pork to get to city markets and school cafeterias over a three-month period. The bad pig came from a slaughterhouse in the Van Phuc livestock slaughtering facility. ASF doesn't threaten human health directly, but outbreaks have been on the rise, from 714 in 2023 to 1,609 in 2024 to 2,782 in 2025, and more than 1.27 million pigs were culled last year. The Hanoi case follows another bust in Hai Phong, where police took down a network that sent roughly 125 tons of ASF-infected pork into a canned food company's warehouse. About two tons of it had already been processed and labeled by the time authorities stepped in.

Pork Bellies Hit the Trading Floor

Staying in the swine-o-sphere, Ho Chi Minh City is putting pork carcasses on the Mercantile Exchange of Vietnam, the first time a domestic commodity exchange has listed meat. The city chews through 13,000 to 14,000 pigs daily in a market that is work almost a billion dollars annually ($960+ million). Trading will be voluntary and will run alongside traditional distribution channels. Only post-slaughter carcasses that meet traceability and food safety standards are eligible for listing.

Read more: VnEconomy

Long Bien Holds, the Metro Line Folds

Hanoi closed its French colonial Long Bien Bridge on April 1 for emergency repairs after a steel truss joint fractured completely, snapping the connecting plate and separating the upper chord members from the truss nodes. The bridge, built in 1902, runs 1,691 meters over the Red River with a patchwork of original spans and wartime replacements, was supposed to retire in 2020 when Metro Line 1 opened with a new river crossing. That metro line, first approved in 2004, has never broken ground and is now penciled in for the 2030-2035 construction period. A previous repair in 2015, which came at a cost of nearly $11.4 million, was designed to keep the bridge alive only until 2020. The span now carrying dozens of daily passenger and freight trains as well as thousands of motorbikes.

Read more: VnExpress

Director to Doorman: CGV Pays Up

CJ CGV Vietnam is being ordered to pay $285,000 to a British marketing director it demoted to (get this:) cinema lobby supervisor before firing him in 2015. Benedict Daniel Sullivan signed on as Sales and Marketing Director on Jan. 1, 2014, at a $4,000 monthly salary plus allowances and commissions. He then went on to ink 127 advertising contracts before CEO Dongwon Kwak decided that his talents were best used supervising a District 7 lobby that October. Sullivan resigned his director title in December 2014, effective Jan. 19, 2015, but the company dismissed him the next day, with no formal termination notice. After nearly a decade of litigation, the March 26 verdict found the Korean cinema chain had been "careless" in treating Sullivan's resignation letter as grounds for termination.

Read more: VnExpress

Tokyo Needs Drivers, Hanoi Has Them

In a bid to fill it’s own labor shortage, Japan is to start testing taxi, bus, and truck drivers in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang today as part of its Specified Skilled Worker visa program. Candidates will be required to pass both a Japanese language test and a skills exam. Once they pass, they’ll be allowed into Japan for a period (six months to a year, depending on license type) where they can work toward converting their Vietnamese licenses to Japanese ones. If they can’t do it in time, they’ll be expected to return to Vietnam.

Read more: VnEconomy

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.

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Vietnam 20260326

August Whitcraft — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:53:58 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

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Headlines:

150 Days to Fix What FDI Built

Hanoi Goes Nuclear (Again), With Putin's Blessing

Brussels Opens the Checkbook, Shuts Out Chinese 5G

Crypto Gets Its Papers After a Decade in Limbo

VietinBank Jolts the Dollar Market as Spread Hits 6%

Lights Out in Dak Lak

Fuel Shock Clips Wings on 23 Weekly Flights

Durian Dollars Roll In While Rice Farmers Sweat

Big Banks Join the VIFC Queue

Hanoi Takes Its Pitch to the Trading Floor

Gold Shrugs Off Gravity

150 Days to Fix What FDI Built

Observers in Ho Chi Minh City are telling exporters that the 150-day US tariff pause ending in July shouldn’t be taken as breathing room, and the end date needs to be treated as a restructuring deadline. Foreign companies make up more than three-quarters of exports and together they posted a $49.5 billion trade surplus with Washington; in contrast, domestic exporters shrank 6.1% and ran a deficit. Low-margin sectors like garments and seafood are going to get the tightest squeeze from the uniform 10% tariff, especially if buyers aren’t willing to absorb the hit. Th risk isn't isn’t just the rate itself but what comes after, namely origin fraud crackdowns that could crater the "Made in Vietnam" label if third-country (*no names mentioned*) goods keep going through local ports to dodge levies.

Hanoi Goes Nuclear (Again), With Putin's Blessing

PM Pham Minh Chinh signed a nuclear power plant deal with Russia in Moscow, bringing atomic energy plans back to life. Vietnam previously scrapped their ambitions in 2016 after Fukushima spooked investors and costs ballooned. The deal, formalized during talks with Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin and witnessed by Rosatom chief Aleksey Likhachev, focuses on what's understood to be the Ninh Thuan 1 project. The resurrection comes as the country needs stable, low-carbon baseload power to keep the fires of industrial growth burning. Bilateral trade with Russia was $4.77 billion in 2025, though Russia is just 26th on the foreign investor leaderboard with just under a billion USD in 199 projects.

Read more: The Moscow Times (Sistema expansion), Vietnam Insiders (Ninh Thuan revival), VnExpress (metro, tourism), VnEconomy ($4.77B trade figure)

Brussels Opens the Checkbook, Shuts Out Chinese 5G

The EU showed up in Hanoi on March 24 with €560 million for transport and clean energy as well as a less-than-subtle message about whose kit should be running the country's telecoms networks. Commissioner Jozef Sikela introduced the package at the EU-Vietnam Global Gateway Business and Investment Forum. The headline piece of the deal is a €40 million transport lending facility for infrastructure projects like the Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City high-speed rail, which is also expected to take in more than €1 billion in concessional loans from European development banks. Those same banks have already signed €230 million in loans for Electricity Vietnam's Bac Ai project, and the European Investment Bank has a €200 million agreement with Techcombank to build out renewable energy and electric mobility for SMEs. The sweetener came with a catch, however, as Sikela publicly asked Hanoi to steer clear of Chinese 5G technology.

Read more: VnEconomy (loan breakdowns), VnEconomy (forestry grant), Table Media (5G warning)

Crypto Gets Its Papers After a Decade in Limbo

Hanoi (finally) has its five-year pilot program to regulate crypto assets properly underway, ending ten years of debate over whether digital currencies are “property,” and who should police them. The Ministry of Finance is tipped to lead oversight, and the State Securities Commission is already accepting registrations from service providers. In getting this moving, the government settled three big questions: 1) Crypto qualifies as an asset because it results from labor and has measurable value. 2) The Civil Code doesn't need rewriting. And 3) Finance takes the wheel because crypto mobilizes capital. Three circulars are in the works to address the fine details of accounting standards, auditing rules, and tax policy for crypto businesses. Service providers can register now; if the pilot delivers, a standalone crypto law is expected to follow.

Read more: VnEconomy

VietinBank Jolts Dollar Market as Spread Hits 6%

VietinBank jolted the forex market on Sunday with a VND42 jump, roughly 0.16%, in its dollar purchase price, eight times the VND5 nudge from Vietcombank, Agribank, and most other banks. The interbank rate rose to VND26,340, almost touching the regulatory ceiling of VND26,344, as the State Bank's central rate crept up VND5 to VND25,090. Free-market dollars now trade at VND27,950-28,000, a gap of roughly VND1,650 over bank counters, which is a noteworthy 6%. The spread has widened roughly 4.5% since the start of this calendar year. Commercial banks are tightening the spread to compete for greenbacks; Techcombank and ACB are down to VND180-185 and LPBank is above VND250, which suggests uneven liquidity across the system.

Read more: VnEconomy

Lights Out in Dak Lak

Security forces sent more than 150 operators into three communes in Dak Lak Province on Sunday, where they nabbed six independent Protestant preachers in pre-dawn raids. Authorities cut power to neighborhoods in Ea Khit Village before 70ish officers surrounded the homes of Y Wen Nie and Y Bay Eban around 6:00 AM. Separate units rolled into Cue Village at 5:00 AM and Puor Village at 5:30 AM. Family members who tried to film the arrests were allegedly assaulted by officers, who reportedly confiscated several phones and destroyed at least one.

Fuel Shock Clips Wings on 23 Weekly Flights

Vietnam Airlines is cutting 23 flights a week starting in April, axing routes including Hai Phong to Buon Ma Thuot and Ho Chi Minh City to Van Don as Jet A-1 prices hit $230 / barrel in Asian trading. That's about double what Brent crude is trading for, as the jet fuel crack spread has opened up. The carrier is getting fuel surcharges ready to slap on to international routes - expect those to kick in by early April. Global airlines have raised fares between 5 and 20% already, and cargo operators are tacking on surcharges of between VND17,000-40,000 for every kilo sent aloft.

Read more: Vietnam News (CAAV survey data), Vietnam Insiders (route details)

Durian Dollars Roll In, Rice Farmers Sweat

Durian shipment invoices to China are at a respectable $300 million YTD, stunningly at a pace of 469% above last year’s. Lobster exports to China are also seeing a robust kick-off to the year, deliveries of that product are up 65%. The off-season timing helps because the durian harvest lands when other products are mostly out of season, putting fruit on Chinese shelves right around Tet when demand peaks. The agriculture ministry is eager to grow that market, but rice is a very different story. Paddy prices are down from last year just as farmers are coming into peak harvest for the winter-spring crop, so the job of figuring out how to move more product will surely be high on the agenda at the rice export conference running in Can Tho this week.

Read more: VnExpress (orchard prices), VnEconomy (rice conference)

Big Banks Join the VIFC Queue

State-owned VietinBank and Vietcombank are joining private lenders in setting up subsidiaries at the International Financial Centre in Ho Chi Minh City. VietinBank is looking options for a subsidiary or other legal entity at the hub, with plans to expand into fintech and digital assets, including partnerships with startups in the orbit of (Japanese) shareholder MUFG to develop payment, lending, and insurance services. The bank is also trying to position itself up as a payment intermediary for digital asset transactions once regulations permit it. Vietcombank is expected to ask shareholders to approve its own VIFC subsidiary, with an eye toward cross-border finance, investment banking, and digital asset services.

Read more: Vietnam News

Hanoi Takes Its Pitch to the Trading Floor

Deputy PM Nguyen Hoa Binh sat down with Nasdaq and NYSE executives in New York on Sunday, pushing the country's international financial center plan to the exchanges that (between them) hold more than 40% of the global market cap. Nasdaq's Jeff Thomas highlighted his exchange's AI and blockchain chops; NYSE's Chris Taylor touted his 2,400 listed companies from 48 countries. Binh asked both for help on developing listing standards, technology transfers, and governance training. Nasdaq said it would support firms that wanted to access US capital markets and NYSE said Vietnams financial center plans are an important step to wider market development. No company from Vietnam has yet listed on a US exchange.

Read more: Vietnam News

Gold Shrugs Off Gravity

Gold rose back to VND176.1 million per tael, up from about VND160 million from early January. Local prices are up almost 10% this year, even as international prices have dropped more than 18% since the Feb. 28 US-Israeli strike on Iran. Dollar strength and fading Fed rate-cut hopes keep dragging global prices down, but local buyers, hedging against the dong's dogged flaccidity, don’t seem to be getting the memo.

Read more: VnExpress (18% global drop), VnExpress ($4,800 recovery prediction)

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.

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Vietnam 20260319

August Whitcraft — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:00:03 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

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Headlines:

Hormuz Jitters Put Hanoi Over a Barrel

Hanoi's Double-Booking Problem

Hanoi Builds a Walled Garden for $200 Billion

Chemical Giant's Chairman Dug His Own Hole

Market Gets Ready for Its Close-Up

Factory Floor or Musical Chairs?

864 Candidates, 500 Seats, 99.64% Turnout

VinFast Doubles Everything

Hanoi Orders Its Banks to Bulk Up

Hanoi Dusts Off Its Nuclear Playbook

Selfie Drones Ground 83 Flights, Military Rolls Out the Jammers

Satellite Internet at Seven Times the Price

Hormuz Jitters Put Hanoi Over a Barrel

PM Pham Minh Chinh told his ministries on March 16 to guarantee uninterrupted fuel supplies and submit a plan by tomorrow (Friday) to cut petroleum taxes and fees, while also asking Japan for access to its crude oil stockpiles and requesting South Korea's help to keep crude imports running smoothly. The scramble comes as a result of Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has forced some shipping routes around the Cape of Good Hope, adding three to four weeks to transit times. Vietnam imports 85% of its crude oil from the Middle East (almost all from Kuwait), and the PM said the government would consider tapping budget reserves for price support if the conflict drags on. Domestic fuel prices have already risen sharply, and a survey by HCMC’s industrial zone authority found 22.5% of firms are adjusting production schedules and 11.7% are pushing back deliveries as logistics costs on some routes are up more than 30%.

Read more: Eneconomy (PM budget pledge), Vision Times (Japan-Korea diplomacy), Eco-Business ($594M solar savings), Eneconomy (investor confidence data), VnExpress (supply chain shift)

Hanoi's Double-Booking Problem

Vietnam and China held their first-ever "3+3" ministerial strategic dialogue in Hanoi on Monday, bringing together foreign affairs, defense, and public security ministers from both countries in a format neither has used with any other partner. Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung said the meeting was thanks to "special bilateral ties" and a "high level of political trust." The sit-down comes about a month after Lam's first meeting with President Trump in February, and just five days after US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer opened a new trade investigation targeting both Asian countries over industrial overcapacity. Chinese state media said the dialogue focused on "safeguarding political security," wording that typically means tightening control over civil society, plus "advancing defense and law enforcement cooperation" on cross-border trafficking and South China Sea disputes. The meeting also built on trade and supply chain integration agreements that were signed in April 2025, and now look more relevant as Washington turns up the heat.

Read more: Fdd (US trade tensions), Eneconomy (dialogue structure details), Eneconomy (Lam statements), CGTN (naval patrol activities), Eneconomy (port investment figures)

Hanoi Builds a Walled Garden for $200 Billion

Vietnam's finance ministry is coming up with rules to block citizens from trading on overseas crypto platforms like Binance, OKX, and Bybit as it launches a domestic licensing pilot that's attracted five firms, including affiliates of Techcombank, VPBank, and LPBank, plus stockbroker VIX Securities and conglomerate Sun Group. The pilot requires a minimum charter capital of 10 trillion dong (~$400 million), and caps foreign ownership at 49%, putting exchange licenses out of reach for all but the largest players. Authorities say they're worried about uncontrolled capital outflows in a market where traders moved more than $200 billion in digital assets in the 12 months through June 2025, putting Vietnam fourth globally on Chainalysis's adoption index. Most Vietnamese rely on foreign platforms since crypto isn't recognized as legal tender domestically, though owning it isn't illegal either. The first licensed exchanges could launch this month, redirecting one of the world's busiest crypto markets through a handful of state-approved gatekeepers while cutting off access to the global exchanges that built the market.

Read more: Theblock (Chainalysis ranking data), Bitcoin Magazine (March 2026 launch), Vietnaminsiders (Five firm names), Coindesk (Capital controls concern), Japantimes Jp (February resolution timing)

Chemical Giant's Chairman Dug His Own Hole

Police arrested Dao Huu Huyen, chairman of Duc Giang Chemicals Group, and his son Dao Huu Duy Anh, the company's vice chairman, for illegal apatite mining that dumped millions of tons of waste in Lao Cai Province's Tang Loong Industrial Park. The family, which owns roughly 41% of the firm privatized in 2003, allegedly mined hundreds of thousands of tons of apatite ore worth hundreds of billions of dong while keeping some transactions off the books and hiding revenue to dodge taxes. The CEO of Duc Giang Lao Cai Chemicals was also arrested. Three other executives are up on resource exploitation charges, and eight more are accused of assisting in the crimes, with four arrested and seven banned from leaving their homes. The stock is down 15% over three days.

Read more: VnExpress

Market Gets Ready for Its Close-Up

The VN-Index pushed ahead more than 40% through 2025, setting up what could be the year's defining market event - an FTSE Russell upgrade to Secondary Growing Market status in September. The reclassification is expected to result in institutional inflows of $6-8 billion, mostly from pension funds, insurers, and index trackers currently barred from investing in frontier markets. The change will matter less for short-term index gains than for a permanent repricing as the market gets benchmarked against Thailand and Indonesia instead of Mongolia and Kenya. Vietnamese stocks still trade at 10-20% below regional peers.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Masan ownership change), Vietnam Investment Review (brokerage firm targets), Eneconomy (FTSE upgrade timeline)

Factory Floor or Musical Chairs?

Bac Ninh's electronics factories are on the hunt for 330,000 (!) workers, and the scramble is getting expensive. Signing bonuses now run to more than $300, with referral payouts stacked on top, as manufacturers chase labor in a province that drew $5.5 billion in FDI last year. Goertek Vina alone needs 120,000 bodies. Fukang wants 60,000. Luxshare is on the prowl for 40,000. The province trains a little more than 20,000 workers a year, meeting less than a third of the demand. The bonus war is creating a side effect nobody planned (or wished) for in a class of workers who treat signing bonuses as a business model, hopping factories every few months to collect payouts. What they may not realize (although they may be well aware and just don’t care) is that each move resets them at lower base wages that provide thinner social insurance contributions, which are quietly hollowing out their unemployment and pension protections. Not a problem if they’re investing the windfalls of signing bonuses, but… we have our doubts.

Read more: VnExpress

864 Candidates, 500 Seats, 99.64% Turnout

Vietnam tallied 76 million ballots in the March 15 National Assembly election, a 99.64% turnout. The Communist Party fielded 864 candidates for 500 seats, offering voters a ratio of 1.73 options per spot in what remains a single-party system. Lao Cai province finished voting earliest, at 5:45 p.m., and joined Hue as two of 34 localities to hit 100% participation. Lao Cai alone has 173 voters aged 100 and above, the oldest being 114-year-old Giang Nu Sua. Given the overwhelming results, it might be reasonable to share some context. The election came days after police arrested journalist Le Anh Hung on March 9, charging him under Article 117 for "propagandizing against the state," a crime that carries up to 20 years of prison time. Hung, a member of the Independent Journalists Association and former contributor to Voice of America, was previously released in 2023 after a five-year sentence that included beatings with a metal chair, being tied to a bed, and forcibly injected with unspecified drugs at a Hanoi psychiatric hospital. The new National Assembly will come together for a five-year term.

Read more: VnExpress (final turnout stats), Eneconomy, Ifex (journalist arrest context), VnExpress (eligible voter totals), VnExpress (leadership voting photos)

VinFast Doubles Everything

VinFast shipped 196,919 electric cars in 2025, up 102% from the prior year, as revenue was up 105% to $3.6 billion. The Q4 sprint delivered 86,557 units, up 127% from the previous quarter, and budget Green brand and EC Van models accounted for just under half of the quarter's deliveries. International markets now make up a little less than a fifth of total global deliveries, up from negligible numbers a year earlier. VinFast now runs 424 showrooms globally, but it should be noted that the unaudited results don't break out how many of the deliveries made were done at a profit.

Read more: VnExpress

Hanoi Orders Its Banks to Bulk Up

The Politburo wants at least three of Vietnam's Big 4 state banks among Asia's 100 largest by assets by 2030, and Resolution No. 79, signed by Party General Secretary To Lam on January 6, explains how its expected to happen. The mandate is to restructure, raise charter capital, and start acting like the "leaders" and "pioneers" the Party keeps saying that they are. Agribank, BIDV, Vietcombank, and Vietinbank together control credit flow though the national banking system, where the state holds either full or controlling stakes. The same resolution is setting up the Vietnam Asset Management Company with the task of getting out of what one observer calls a "bad debt warehouse" and turning itself into a market entity that’s capable of turning NPLs into cash flow. The Vietnam Debt Trading Company is getting similar marching orders.

Read more: Eneconomy

Hanoi Dusts Off Its Nuclear Playbook

The Finance Ministry has been told to set up an appraisal council for the Ninh Thuan 1 nuclear power project, and reports are due before the National Assembly's first session of its 16th tenure (in April). The order comes after a Politburo resolution for both Ninh Thuan 1 and Ninh Thuan 2 to move forward with "suitable partners," and get things operational by between 2030 and 2035. Vietnam previously shelved its nuclear ambitions a decade ago on cost concerns, but the energy environment has change significantly since then.

Selfie Drones Ground 83 Flights, Military Rolls Out the Jammers

Six illegal drone flights near Da Nang's airport disrupted 83 commercial aircraft over Tet (the Lunar New Year week), forcing planes into holding patterns or forcing them to divert 80 km to Phu Bai. Military units are now on patrol with anti-drone jamming guns and surveillance systems. A 25-year-old Chinese tourist was the latest to get his DJI Mavic 3 Pro seized, as he was caught flying near East Sea Park on March 14. Fines are between about $1,100 and $1,500. The airport's mid-city position puts approach paths right over tourist beaches.

Read more: Dronedj (military response), VnExpress (fines), VN Economy (industry context)

Satellite Internet at Seven Times the Price

Starlink got its Vietnam license in February and plans to charge $85 a month plus $350 for equipment. For context, that’s about seven times what local fiber costs, but the prices have not been finalized yet. The initial rollout limits the number of terminals to 600,000, a number that would serve only a sliver of the country's 25 million internet users. At the proposed price point, mass adoption beyond remote areas where cable doesn't reach is going to be a tough sell.

Vietnam 20260312

August Whitcraft — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:25:17 GMT

News from Southeast Asia directly to your inbox every weekday.

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Headlines:

Hanoi Goes to DEFCON Fuel

The Airport Boss Grounded Over Graft

Factory Floor Gold Rush

Seoul's Chip Shop Sets Up in Saigon

POSCO Bets Big on Battery Brains

Hanoi's Laos Insurance Policy

Dress Rehearsal for FTSE

Hanoi Lets Multinationals Drop the Dong

More Rice, Less Money

Banks Lead the Bounce

Highlands Coffee Eyes a Listing With Its Latte

From Moscow With Luggage

Hanoi Goes to DEFCON Fuel

Vietnam has thrown everything short of rationing at a Middle East-driven energy crisis this week, authorizing state oil giant PVN to buy and import crude independently for the first time, cutting fuel import tariffs to zero through April 30, and telling ministries to diversify supply sources by a deadline of today. Domestic prices have gone up by between about 20 or 30% since late February, with diesel now VND30,239/ liter. Transport operators have already started to pass costs through, with logistics firms adding per-container surcharges, and Vietnam Railway raising passenger and freight fares 10% and 15% respectively. Agricultural producers are also keeping an eye on production costs climb 3-5%, as maritime freight rates are also moving 25-35% in the wrong direction.

Read more: Reuters (shortage timeline), Reuters (prices), Vietnam News (fare hikes), Vietnam News (agriculture impact), Vietnam News (AV tax)

The Airport Boss Grounded Over Graft

The chairman of Airport Corporation of Vietnam and a deputy general director have been arrested for bid-rigging and bribery, three months before the $12.8 billion Long Thanh International Airport is supposed to open for business. Le Van Phiet, who ran ACV as general director since 2018 and chaired its board since late 2024, allegedly took money to steer contracts on the nation’s biggest infrastructure project. Nguyen Tien Viet, a board member and deputy general director who heads the Long Thanh project management board, has also been detained. ACV runs all 23 airports nationwide, so the allegations cut across the entire state aviation portfolio. The company quietly shuffled its leadership shortly (weeks) before the arrests became public, and while Long Thanh is still scheduled for a June launch, and the financials were due in January, ACV has yet to publish its fourth-quarter 2025 numbers. Despite all this, the stock is up about 15% this year.

Read more: VnExpress

Factory Floor Gold Rush

GE Vernova is putting $200 million into a new high voltage DC (HVDC) transformer plant in Hai Phong, announced at the Energy of Change Summit on March 10, with full operations expected by 2028. The plant will build large power transformers for high-voltage direct current projects, adding to existing plants in Stafford, UK, and India. Foxconn's Bac Ninh subsidiary Fulian Precision Technology Component lifted its charter capital by about 10%, bringing the total to $381.4 million. UK asset manager Gresham House has purchased Asia Clean Capital Vietnam through its SUSI Asia Energy Transition Fund, folding the rooftop solar developer into its regional OASIS platform. All of this means that realized FDI was sitting at $3.21 billion through the end of February for the highest two-month start in five years.

Read more: Vietnam News (founder transition details), Eneconomy (GE HVDC timeline), Eneconomy (Foxconn capital increases), Solarquarter, Eneconomy (sector-wide FDI data)

Seoul's Chip Shop Sets Up in Saigon

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung oversaw the first semiconductor steering committee meeting of the year on Tuesday. The committee is reporting $16 billion in cumulative FDI in 228 projects, with South Korea ponying up 45.3% of the cash. Vietnam now has around 7,000 chip design engineers, plus more than 6,000 engineers and 10,000+ technicians in packaging and testing, most of them working for foreign assembly operations, but the steering committee's own scorecard shows just 13 of 38 strategy tasks completed, with workforce shortages and limited R&D capacity still holding back domestic firms trying to move beyond assembly work for Samsung and its peers.

Read more: Vietnam News

POSCO Bets Big on Battery Brains

POSCO Holdings has given the go-ahead to a roughly quarter billion dollar artificial graphite plant in Thai Nguyen. The plat is expected to churn out up to 55,000 tons of annual anode capacity by 2028. The Korean steelmaker's battery arm, POSCO Future M, already runs an 8,000-ton facility in Pohang (SK), but the northern Vietnam site will have less expensive electrify, lower labor costs, and trade access to US and European markets without the same tariff headaches. Construction will start in 2H of this year, with output phased in as customer orders roll in. Artificial graphite anodes, a chokepoint component in lithium-ion cells, have become a flashpoint as carmakers elbow with each other to get battery supply outside China.

Hanoi's Laos Insurance Policy

General Secretary To Lam made his third trip to Laos in 18 months this February, pushing a "strategic cohesion" vision that swaps revolutionary bonhomie with infrastructure. Hanoi is handing Vientiane a 60% share in Vung Ang Port and expects to break ground this year on a $6.6 billion railway to connect landlocked Laos to the sea. Laos rolled out a national digital citizen ID system in December 2025 built on Vietnam's VNeID technology, in what is basically an export of Hanoi's governance infrastructure.

Read more: Fulcrum SG, Azertag AZ (cooperation specifics)

Dress Rehearsal for FTSE

FTSE Russell's September upgrade decision is coming, and Vietnam's stock market regulator spent Monday drilling listed companies on annual meeting protocol at a governance forum in Hanoi. The State Securities Commission's vice chairman told executives that international funds watch shareholder meetings as closely as balance sheets, as these days they need board accountability and strategy planning more than the scripted formalities of yesteryear. Relatedly, the new Vietnam Corporate Governance Code published last month brings local standards closer to the OECD ones, and companies are being told that their AGMs need to look like actual shareholder conversations, not the usual scripted affairs, if they want global fund managers to bring money. The real stakes will come in September, when FTSE Russell decides whether to pull the upgrade trigger, a move that will almost immediately funnel billions in passive fund flows into Vietnamese equities.

Read more: Vietnam News

Hanoi Lets Multinationals Drop the Dong

The Ministry of Finance's Circular No. 99/2025/TT-BTC now lets companies ditch the Vietnamese Dong as their accounting currency if most of their cash flows are denominated in dollars, euros, or other foreign currencies. The change from form-based to substance-based rules mean exporters and multinationals will finally be able to book revenues and costs in the currency they mostly use, rather than force-fitting everything into VND and watching their financials blur. Revenue and expense patterns are expected to take priority over financing sources when choosing which currency qualifies.

Read more: Eneconomy

More Rice, Less Money

Vietnamese farmers shipped 1.3 million tonnes of rice in January and February, 5% more than last year, but earned $599.3 million, a drop of 11.2% as average export prices fell on buyers holding back with bets that prices would drop further. The Philippines still takes nearly half the product, but China is suddenly buying nearly six times more than they did a year ago. The winter-spring harvest is flooding southern ports with supply just as freight costs are on the rise, so selling more but pocketing less seems to be the story of the season.

Read more: Eneconomy, VnExpress (freight cost)

Banks Lead the Bounce

The VN-Index was up 1.45% Tuesday to close at 1,676.73 points, breaking a three-session slide that ended Monday with the market's largest single-day drop on record. Seven of the ten biggest gainers were banks, led by Vietcombank and Vietinbank, up 3% to 7%. Materials stocks like Hoa Phat hit ceiling prices. Oil and gas names went the opposite direction, with Binh Son Refinery, Petrolimex and PV Gas all hitting floor prices on crude jitters. The dong softened to ~VND27,200 on the black market, up 1.12% from the weekend, as investors across Asia dumped risk assets and piled into USD.

Read more: Vietnam News (banking rebound), VnExpress

Highlands Coffee Eyes a Listing With Its Latte

Highlands Coffee is working toward a Vietnamese exchange IPO in Q1 2027. Jollibee, which took a 60 percent stake in 2012 when the chain had just 56 stores, has blown it up into a 1,000+ location operation across Vietnam and the Philippines. The listing would give the coffee brand direct access to capital markets as it sets itself up as the leading Vietnamese coffee brand in Southeast Asia. The company has signed international and local advisers to structure the deal. If it goes through, it would be one of the largest food-and-beverage listings the Vietnam has ever seen.

From Moscow, With Luggage

A 332% jump in Russian arrivals has catapulted Russia into third place for tourist source markets in February. The month saw 121,493 Russian arrivals. The previous third-top source, Cambodia, cratered from third to ninth after posting just 54,205 visitors, a 75% drop from January. South Korea retook the top spot from mainland China, 971,000 arrivals to 922,000. Total inbound traffic was 2.2 million for the month, up 17.7% year-on-year even as it slipped 9.2% from January. The Russian influx is expected as a result of expanded direct flights from Moscow; Cambodia's plunge likely comes as a result of tightened border crossing counts after the scam compound crackdowns.

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Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:34:06 GMT

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Headlines:

Foreign Exit, FTSE Entrance

Bombs Over Tehran, Workers Frozen

Cold War Chip Ban, Lifted

Highlands Coffee Brews a Listing

Vuong's $20 Billion Ride

Seven Years of Yellow, the Final Inspection

Factory Floor Says What Harvard Already Knew

Hospital Bills Come Due

Samsung Rakes In a Tenth of Global Profit

VinFast's Million-Scooter Moonshot

Hanoi Tells Gas-Burning Cabs: You've Got Five Years

Barcoded Trees, Tariffed Furniture

Foreign Exit, FTSE Entrance

$5.1 billion exited the Vietnamese stock market through 2025, a record exodus in the same year that the benchmark index climbed 41% for its strongest gain in eight years. FTSE Russell is now closing in on reclassifying the market to Secondary Growing status (that should happen in September). The outflows continued into early 2026, dropping foreign ownership to roughly 14.5% of a $332 billion market, with investors pointing to Trump tariff risks, ownership caps that make deeper positions untenable, and Vingroup's outsized pull on index performance. Vietcap Securities puts the odds of failing FTSE's March review at "zero chance" after regulators issued Circular 08 in February, letting foreign funds place orders through global brokers without opening local accounts. The upgrade would slot the market at 0.34% of FTSE's all-cap index, modest but enough to pull in passive inflows from pension funds and ETFs that are required to track the benchmark.

Read more: Reuters, Vietnaminsiders, Theinvestor (28 stocks list), Eneconomy (credit rating push)

Bombs Over Tehran, Workers Frozen

Hanoi suspended labor deployments to the Middle East on March 1 after the February 28 U.S.-Israeli offensive killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and set off retaliatory strikes across the region. Around 10,000 workers are already there, nearly 6,000 in Saudi Arabia, and about 4,000 in the UAE, with a handful more in Qatar and Bahrain, mostly in domestic service, hospitality, and construction. The Department of Overseas Labor Management told recruitment agencies to keep in contact with employers and embassies but gave no timeline about when deployments might restart, saying only it would wait until "the situation returns to normal." Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said the attacks threaten citizens in the region, though diplomatic missions have reported no casualties or damage to date.

Read more: VnExpress, Theinvestor (economic stability concerns), VnExpress (worker deployment suspension)

Cold War Chip Ban, Lifted

On February 20, President Trump removed Vietnam from the U.S. strategic export control list where it had sat since the Cold War alongside China, Russia, and North Korea, clearing the way to buy advanced chipmaking equipment from American companies. That same day, party chief To Lam landed in Washington to ink the deal, having broken ground five weeks earlier on Viettel's first domestically owned chip fabrication plant in Hanoi. The facility will make 32-nanometer chips, the kind that run cars and telecom networks, not the bleeding-edge 2- or 3-nanometer chips that dominate headlines but need far more capital and expertise. Days before flying to Washington, Lam's government held back-to-back meetings with ASML, the Dutch maker of advanced chip equipment that Washington has pressured the Netherlands to stop selling to China, to talk about a training center and an official company presence. Vietnam has about 7,000 chip engineers right now and the target is 50,000 by 2030, a gap that a new law is trying to close by exempting high-quality tech workers from needing work permits and offering five-year visas that also cover spouses and children.

Read more: Restofworld, Eneconomy (talent incentives policy)

Highlands Coffee Brews a Listing

Jollibee's coffee chain Highlands Coffee is looking at an IPO on the Hanoi bourse, with a listing hoped for in the first quarter of 2027. The brand has grown from 56 stores when Jollibee bought it in 2012 to nearly 1,000 outlets today, making it the largest coffee chain in the country. No Vietnamese coffee chain has ever gone public, and the company hasn't shared a target valuation. A successful listing would be the biggest test yet of whether Hanoi's exchange can hold institutional interest beyond the usual bank and property names.

Read more: Reuters (dual listing strategy), Business Inquirer

Vuong's $20 Billion Ride

Pham Nhat Vuong merged his ride-hailing unit GSM with electric vehicle rental outfit Green Future, creating a combined entity with $1.6 billion in charter capital that could list on a foreign exchange as soon as 2027 at a reported $20 billion valuation (that would be roughly a third of Grab's current market cap). GSM already claims more than half the domestic ride-hailing market three years post-launch and also runs in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Laos. Green Future leads the EV rental and used car business. The combined company is expected to bundle delivery, electric motorbike hailing, and electric bus services under one roof.

Seven Years of Yellow, the Final Inspection

The European Commission's fifth inspection team will land on March 9 to decide whether to lift the yellow card that was imposed on seafood exports in October 2017 OR to escalate the penalty to a red card that would shut wild-caught fish out of the EU entirely. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh hosted a meeting Monday to prepare, while Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha sent a telegram telling ministries to sync vessel databases, chase criminal IUU cases, and make sure no boats with disconnected monitoring systems leave port. More than 80,000 fishing vessels have been registered on the VNFishbase system, and officials reported no new foreign water violations in recent weeks. Chinh struck a personal note: "Do not let the mistake of an individual or a group affect the collective effort of the entire country."

Read more: Seafoodsource (red card impact), Eneconomy (vessel registration numbers)

Factory Floor Says What Harvard Already Knew

Manufacturing PMI hit 54.3 in February, up from 51.9 in January, a four-month high, with output climbing at the fastest clip since July 2024. Business confidence reached a 41-month peak as firms ramped up hiring and stockpiling inputs. Harvard's Growth Lab ranked the country as the world's top growth prospect through 2035, pointing to manufacturing complexity well above what its income level would predict.

Read more: Eneconomy (PMI methodology details), VnExpress (Harvard growth forecast)

Hospital Bills Come Due

Former Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, 67, faces prosecution for violations that caused $2.68 million in direct losses across two hospital construction projects. Investigators say Tien approved hiring foreign consultants for the Bach Mai Hospital and Viet Duc University Hospital expansions without Prime Minister clearance, then signed off on architectural plans and contractor appointments that violated procurement regulations. Six other officials are also caught up in the case, including two project directors that are facing both graft and bribery charges.

Read more: VnExpress

Samsung Rakes In a Tenth of Global Profit

Samsung's four subsidiaries raked in $3.53 billion in net profit last year, roughly a tenth of the electronics giant's global haul. Combined sales hit $59.7 billion between the Thai Nguyen and Ho Chi Minh City plants, the display facility, and the consumer electronics complex, an 8% increase from a year earlier. That is a quarter of Samsung Electronics' worldwide revenue flowing through a single production base. Profit grew 12%, a decent read on global electronics appetite given that Samsung has sunk $23.2 billion here to date, a sprawling bet that local manufacturing can handle both volume and complexity at the high end of the value chain.

VinFast's Million-Scooter Moonshot

VinFast got the green light from Ha Tinh province for a $506 million electric scooter and e-bike plant in the Vung Ang Economic Zone, with approval landing on February 28. The facility is expected to pump out a million units per year once Phase 1 wraps up, and Phase 2 should double the plant’s capacity. VinFast says it will finish investment procedures and break ground before the end of Q1, and start mass production by Q2, a timeline that would be ambitious for a lunch order, let alone a factory of this scale.

Read more: Eneconomy

Hanoi Tells Gas-Burning Cabs: You've Got Five Years

The capital plans to convert all 14,300 gasoline and diesel taxis to electric by 2030; nearly 8,800 are already running on batteries. The city is offering subsidized loans, has waived registration fees, and has set preferential parking rates to get to almost two-thirds conversion by the end of this year.

Read more: Eneconomy

Barcoded Trees, Tariffed Furniture

Wood exports totaled $18.5 billion in 2025, up almost 7% over 2024, even though Washington put a 25% duty on kitchen cabinets and upholstered furniture last October. Wooden furniture still accounts for $10.25 billion of that total; the US bought $9.46 billion worth of wood and wooden products overall, or more than half the industry's export turnover. The next play is for the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to build a nationwide plantation forest coding system that’s designed to prove timber legality and fend off dumping and circumvention complaints before they metastasize. The system will tag every plantation tree in the country with a barcode in response to anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties, and Section 232 probes that are already pressuring plywood and furniture.

Read more: Eneconomy

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