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Feb 12, 2026

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Headlines:

Wall Street of the Mekong

Thirty Minutes or Bust

Silicon Valley, Bac Ninh Edition

Hanoi's Dance Card Fills Up

Carrots and Carbon Caps

Europe Discovers Pho

Steel and Ships: Industrial Engine Runs Hot

Tap and Go Across Borders

Murphy Strikes Lucky in the Oil Patch

Norway Bets $4 Million That Vietnam's Trash Is Treasure

Wall Street of the Mekong

The International Financial Centre in Ho Chi Minh City on was finally, officially, really, truly launched on Tuesday, as Singapore's Vantage Point Asset Management committed to applying $10 billion of firepower over five years as a founding development partner. The 898-hectare site in Thu Thiem and central Saigon already has $6.1 billion promised to an aviation finance center, $2 billion lined up for smart city infrastructure, and a $1 billion on-chain economy fund for blockchain and tokenization experiments. The center does hold some potential to nudge Vietnam from being a passive recipient of capital to that of a more active player in regional markets, though even optimistic timelines suggest seven years or more before the thing reaches maturity. VPAM, regulated by Australia's ASIC and holding a Capital Markets Services license from Singapore's MAS, plans to build an institutional asset management platform at the center, allowing Vietnamese products to be brought to investors in Singapore, London, the Middle East, and Australia. The center features a specialized court, an international arbitration body, and a maritime finance hub. Getting the legal scaffolding in place may have been the easy part - now comes institution-building, staffing, and figuring out whether international players will show up.

Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Regulatory Framework), Vietnam Investment Review (Market Growth), Eneconomy (Initial Investment Details), Tradingview (Fundraising Commitment), Eneconomy (Investment Strategy)

Thirty Minutes or Bust

Vietnam's Party General Secretary gave Ho Chi Minh City an ultimatum: cut travel time from downtown to Long Thanh Airport to 30 minutes before the facility opens in June. The roughly 40-kilometer journey on the existing Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay Expressway is already snarling with congestion, and upgrades to Ring Road 3, National Highway 51, as well as provincial routes 25B and 25C are still unfinished. The top leader warned that poor connectivity could undermine the country's biggest infrastructure bet, and said traffic congestion is the city's most serious bottleneck for logistics and tourism. He also wants the trip from Thu Dau Mot to downtown cut to ~30 minutes, and said that both targets are conditions necessary for regional growth. Hanoi is rolling out out its own congestion strategy, pushing smart traffic tech, electric buses, and bike lanes for a city of 8.7 million that absorbs almost one and a half million daily trips from neighboring provinces. Vietnam's urban mobility crunch is now a top-tier political priority, with the clock ticking loudest in the south.

Read more: VnExpress (Infrastructure roadmap), Travel and Tour World (Urban mobility strategy)

Silicon Valley, Bac Ninh Edition

FPT fired up Vietnam's first domestically owned semiconductor testing and packaging plant in Bac Ninh province, a move forward beyond the country's usual role of putting together other people's chips. Phase one, scheduled for 2026 and 2027 at Yen Phong II-C Industrial Park, will introduce six functional testing lines and a dedicated reliability area to meet ISO and automotive standards including AEC-Q100 and AEC-Q101. By 2030, FPT hopes to add 18 more testing lines, and bring in advanced packaging tech like chip-scale and wafer-level capabilities. The facility will double as a training ground for Vietnam's goal of creating 50,000 semiconductor professionals by decade's end. FPT is working with Viettel, which broke ground on the country's first actual chip fab in January.

Hanoi's Dance Card Fills Up

PM Pham Minh Chinh hosted leaders from 37 Japanese companies on February 9, courting fresh investment from Vietnam's largest foreign backer even as state-owned BSR signed energy MoUs with Chevron, Marquis Energy, and ADM the same week. Japan's existing 5,722 projects represent a total of $78.9 billion, and bilateral trade continues pressing higher. The US energy deals are for crude oil supply for the Dung Quat refinery, ethanol biofuel imports, and corn feedstock for domestic ethanol production. Hanoi is still keen on talking up its double-digit growth targets for 2026 through 2030 and continues to pitch semiconductors, green energy, and tech transfer to anyone who will listen. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is framing the US agreements as proof it can turn commitments into projects, a useful signal as Washington and Hanoi negotiate a broader trade deal.

Read more: Hydrocarbonengineering (Energy deal), Oananews (Investment targets)

Carrots and Carbon Caps

Vietnam kicked off the year with a regulatory triple play. Decree 20, handed down on January 15, gives startups and private firms tax exemptions and simpler access to land, backing up last year's Resolution 198 which is intended to support private sector growth. The new Construction Law, effective July 1, finally clarifies that the civil code applies where construction rules don't, ending years of confusion over penalty caps and contract disputes. It also recognizes pre-determined compensation for specific breaches for the first time and drops the state appraisal requirement for drawings. Just over 100 cement, steel, and thermal power facilities just learned their greenhouse gas quotas for 2025 and 2026: 243 million and 268 million tons of CO2 equivalent, respectively. Deputy PM Tran Hong Ha called it a pilot to get comfortable with emissions controls before rolling them out nationwide.

Read more: Vietnam-Briefing (startup tax), Pinsentmasons (contract clarity), Eneconomy (emission quotas)

Europe Discovers Pho

The folks at immigration logged nearly 2.5 million foreign arrivals in January, the highest monthly figure ever, up 18.5% year-on-year. Europeans led the way, with arrivals up nearly 60% to 424,000 visitors, and Russia alone posted a 195% increase. Asia still dominates with 1.8 million arrivals, but the European numbers suggest visa reforms and new flights are finally pulling their weight outside the local neighborhood.

Read more: Eneconomy (Tourism statistics), Travel and Tour World (Market breakdown), Retailnews Asia (Flight launch)

Steel and Ships: Industrial Engine Runs Hot

Seagoing vessel calls at Vietnamese ports rose by about a third in 2025 to 134,600, and crude steel production has hit its highest level in five years. Steel exports climbed 12.8% to 3.15 million tonnes, helped by zero or minimal anti-dumping duties from the EU, Canada, Australia, and India. Cargo throughput rose 10% at seaports, 17% at inland ports.

Read more: Eneconomy (Port Investment), Steelradar (Steel Export)

Tap and Go Across Borders

VNPAY and Vietnam's national payment corporation NAPAS signed a cooperation agreement on February 11 to build cross-border QR payment infrastructure connecting Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. The deal lets tourists from those countries pay at VNPAY's nearly 300,000 Vietnamese merchant locations using their home banking apps, while Vietnamese travelers can do the same abroad at partner acceptance points. The two organizations will share expertise on security, staff training, and tech development, but the agreement is vague on timelines and which specific banking partners in neighboring countries are signing on. VNPAY, which already handles digital payments, e-invoicing, and tax software for nearly 300,000 businesses, gets to expand its footprint regionally while NAPAS, the state-backed payment rails operator, will now grow its reach beyond domestic card networks.

Murphy Strikes Lucky in the Oil Patch

Murphy Oil's recent drilling success is pulling foreign capital back into Vietnam's upstream sector after years of stagnation. The American operator hit pay dirt focusing on oil prospects rather than gas, working within Petrovietnam's existing coordination structures instead of fighting them. Foreign investors are circling again, though they're keeping deals small and tightly structured. Leadership changes in Hanoi have energy watchers talking up the possibility of faster project approvals, but gas pricing remains a mess and nobody's figured out how to align the broader value chain. Oil's having a moment because it sidesteps those headaches. Capital appears to be flowing to what works, not what the state says it wants.

Norway Bets $4 Million That Vietnam's Trash Is Treasure

Norfund (an investment fund owned and funded by the Norwegian Government for developing countries) is putting $4 million into Circular Plastics Company to expand its PET recycling plant outside Ho Chi Minh City, which has an annual capacity of 31,000 metric tons of recycled flakes and 14,000 tons of food-grade pellets. Currently, only about half of Vietnam's PET bottles get collected, and demand for recycled content is climbing fast as manufacturers try to cut emissions and boost recycled inputs.

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