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Headlines:
Musk Gets the Green Light
Hanoi Turns Off the Tap
Bangkok and Tokyo Go Shopping
Nukes, Wind, and $136 Billion: Hanoi Chases Every Watt
Seventeen Million Believers Learn a Hard Lesson
Three Hours Late? Full Refund
Special Delivery: A Drone Crosses the Sea
The Factory Floor Finds a Wallet
Tigers in Cold Storage
Musk Gets the Green Light
Vietnam has given SpaceX a full satellite internet license, clearing the way for Starlink to build out four gateway stations and deliver up to 600,000 terminals (apparently capped to keep spectrum manageable) during a five-year pilot. The Radio Frequency Department's approval came days before party chief To Lam goes to Washington for the first meeting of Trump's Board of Peace, a body originally conceived to rebuild Gaza but whose charter now appears to stretch well beyond Palestinian territory. Hanoi and Washington are six rounds deep into trade talks after Trump slapped 20% tariffs on Vietnamese goods last year, though no deal has landed yet. Starlink's website still says service is "coming soon," and no actual launch date has been announced. Nearly 80% of the country's roughly 100 million people already have internet access, so the play here is filling gaps and adding redundancy, not revolutionizing a market that Viettel, VNPT, and MobiFone already dominate.
Read more: Reuters (Trump peace visit), VietnamNet, Newsbytesapp (trade talks context), Hanoitimes, Thesun
Hanoi Turns Off the Tap
BIDV told its branches on Wednesday to stop submitting new real estate project proposals and property business plans from corporate clients to head office, freezing the pipeline until further notice. The state lender is following the central bank’s lead in saying that real estate credit growth this year can't outpace overall system-wide loan expansion, a blunt cap after property lending rebounded sharply last year. Outstanding real estate loans nationwide sit at about VND2 quadrillion ($77 billion), and the pace of that rebound has analysts worried that capital is chasing speculative deals instead of real housing demand. BIDV is one of the Big Four state-controlled banks alongside Vietcombank, VietinBank and Agribank, and it has already started hiking home loan rates for individual borrowers to match or beat private-sector lenders. A senior executive at another state lender said authorities have capped credit growth quotas for property this year, with higher rates serving as a tool to steer capital toward manufacturing and high-tech industries instead. The freeze lands as Hanoi pushes to set up trading floors for gold, real estate and crypto assets before the end of February, part of an effort to get a handle on asset markets that have run ahead of regulators.
Read more: Theinvestor (BIDV lending halt), VnExpress (gold tax rationale)
Bangkok and Tokyo Go Shopping
Vietnam's M&A market hit $8.72 billion in 367 deals in 2025, with foreign investors accounting for more than half the disclosed value. Thai and Japanese buyers did most of the lifting. Thai conglomerate Berli Jucker took full control of MM Mega Market's wholesale and retail chain, and ThaiBev's Fraser and Neave spent $232.5 million lifting its Vinamilk stake to 24.99%. Japanese office supplier Kokuyo paid $185 million for a 65% slice of stationery maker Thien Long Group. The average deal size was $51.3 million, in line with what Grant Thornton called a "predominantly mid-market" focus on medium-sized companies rather than trophy assets.
Read more: News Tuoitre
Nukes, Wind, and $136 Billion: Hanoi Chases Every Watt
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has handed down an order to finalize a report on the negotiation results of a construction agreement with Russia for the Ninh Thuan 1 nuclear plant. He also continues to court Norway's state fund Norfund to bankroll offshore wind and storage projects. Electricity demand is climbing 10-12% yearly, and Hanoi is working every angle: reviving nuclear talks frozen for a decade, shopping for turbine money in Oslo, and clearing land in Khanh Hoa province for reactors. Acting Industry and Trade Minister Le Manh Hung called on Norwegian companies and Norfund to invest in offshore wind, energy storage, and related infrastructure during a February 10 meeting with Norway's Minister of International Development, Åsmund Aukrust.
Read more: Eneconomy (Russia nuclear timeline), Scandasia (Norway $136B pitch)
Seventeen Million Believers Learn a Hard Lesson
Hoang Le turned $4,000 into $200,000 by trading crypto from his Hanoi dorm room, then watched it all vanish when bitcoin cratered from its $126,000 peak in October. He's calling the wipeout "tuition fees". The 23-year-old has plenty of company: an estimated 17 million Vietnamese own digital assets, putting the country behind only India, the US and Pakistan in adoption. Now blockchain startups are hemorrhaging staff, with one firm cutting a third of its workforce and warning more cuts are coming. The government broke up an alleged $400 million scam operation but stopped short of China's outright ban, instead passing a law last year to regulate the estimated $100 billion market. That regulatory framework came too late to save Le's portfolio or the jobs disappearing across Ho Chi Minh City's blockchain scene.
Read more: Citizentribune
Three Hours Late? Full Refund
Vietnam's transport ministry wants to cut the delay threshold for mandatory ticket refunds from five hours to three, tightening passenger rights under draft rules for the 2025 Civil Aviation Law. Airlines would also owe compensation starting at four hours, and will be required to provide meals after two. Carriers are whining about the timing, given the industry's financial state, but to be fair, enforcement of existing protections has been spotty at best, so the new rules might not be too burdensome if they choose to drag their feet.
Read more: VnExpress
Special Delivery: A Drone Crosses the Sea
A 2kg parcel flew 12 kilometers from Cần Giờ to Vũng Tàu in about 15 minutes last week, six times faster than road transport and Vietnam's first cross-sea drone delivery. CT Group's UAV handled coastal winds at up to 200 meters altitude, cruising at 10 to 15 meters per second within a tightly managed 300-meter-wide flight corridor. If the route becomes commercial, the it could move 3,000 to 5,000 small parcels daily and service the ~120 large ships anchored offshore that need documents and supplies ferried out. Vietnam Post says it's still finalizing the process before opening the route to paying customers.
Read more: Asianewswork
The Factory Floor Finds a Wallet
Citi economists think Vietnam's GDP growth will hold at 8% in 2026, even as the export boom that powered 2025 starts cooling off. Notably, their view seems to be mostly based on the good news on the home front: consumption growth staying strong, infrastructure spending holding up, and per capita income rising above $5,000. The domestic consumption base now rivals Malaysia's and Thailand's, a sign that the economy's center of gravity is moving. Citi sees 2025's supply chain rush and US-bound export peak as cyclical, but expects semiconductor demand tied to AI investment to keep electronics shipments supported. The bank did, however, flag two issues: loan growth is outpacing deposits, which could push interest rates higher, and the dong may weaken ~3% as the current account surplus shrinks on rising imports and a liberalized gold trade. Citi also expects sovereign rating agencies to upgrade their ratings from stable to positive.
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review
Tigers in Cold Storage
Police in Thanh Hoa province found two frozen adult tigers weighing a combined 400kg in a basement this week, arresting buyer Hoang Dinh Dat, 52, and seller Nguyen Doan Son, 31, over a deal worth roughly $97,000. Dat told officers he planned to produce tiger bone glue (!?), a sticky substance believed to heal skeletal ailments. Vietnam remains both a consumption hub and a popular trafficking route for illegal animal products, with Thanh Hoa sitting south of Hanoi along established corridors. Tigers once roamed the country's forests but have now almost entirely disappeared, making two of them turning up in a residential freezer a grim kind of inventory check.
Read more: Straits Times
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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