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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.
Read more: Vietnam Insiders
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.
Read more: Vietnam Insiders
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.
Read more: Le Monde
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
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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