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To Lam Brings Six Politburo Members, Leaves With a BrahMos (Maybe)
To Lam went to New Delhi for his first state visit as Vietnam's president, and the way he turned up about a month after his re-election with a delegation of Politburo heavyweights makes it clear that this was more than a courtesy call. He and Modi upgraded bilateral ties to an “Enhanced Complete Strategic Partnership,” put their signatures on 13 agreements, and set a $25 billion trade target for 2030 (from about $16 billion today). The commercial substance involves rare earths, pharma market access, and rails for a financial link between India's UPI and Vietnam's fast payment network. India offered maintenance and overhaul support for Hanoi's Sukhoi-30s and Kilo-class submarines, and when asked directly about BrahMos cruise missiles, the Ministry of External Affairs' P. Kumaran told reporters, "watch this space." India has already sold BrahMos to the Philippines and closed a deal with Indonesia. Vietnam, which has shown interest in the shore-based anti-ship variant for South China Sea coastal defense, is rumored to be next in the queue.
Read more: SCMP (hedging superpowers), Indian Express (partnership elevation), Economic Times (UPI-Vietnam), Cambodianess ($700M BrahMos), The Tribune (MRO, patrol boats)
Takaichi's Hanoi Encore: Chips, Space, a $60 Billion Clock
Sanae Takaichi picked Hanoi for her first Southeast Asian stop after being elected as Japan's first female PM, and she didn't come empty-handed. Her three-day visit resulted in six signed agreements in space, infrastructure, irrigation, disaster resilience, and climate, as well as a chip-engineer program and a commitment to absorb about half of the 500 doctoral students that Hanoi wants trained in semiconductor-related tech by 2030. The headline numbers are $5 billion in annual Japanese investment and $60 billion of two-way trade, both officially by 2030, but the Japanese Embassy thinks $60 billion is reachable by next year given that trade already cleared $51.4 billion in 2025 and was up 12.7% in Q1.
Read more: VnExpress (ODA ranking), Eurasia Review (Takaichi meetings), VnExpress ($60B timeline), VnExpress (POWERR Asia)
Moody's Warms Up to Hanoi
Moody's bumped the Vietnam outlook from stable to positive even as it kept its Ba2 rating in place. The improvement is being credited to governance reforms that have been rolling out since late 2024 and a less-than-feared damage from US trade measures. The agency said that a broad-based export base, recovering domestic demand, and regular FDI inflows provide a needed underpinning of the credit profile. Banking sector risks, real estate vulnerabilities, and institutional bottlenecks are still standing between the status quo and a more substantive upgrade.
Read more: Fibre2Fashion
Customs Puts Rare Earths Behind the Counter
Vietnam Customs published Official Dispatch No.15912/CHQ-GSQL, which requires a physical inspection of every rare earth export shipment and forces exporters to declare mine origin, mining licenses, recovery permits, and extraction details at the customs declaration stage. Trading companies that haven’t done the digging themselves will now need to show domestic purchase contracts and invoices to prove a chain of custody.
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review
Hanoi Picks Ten Workhorses
Decision No.21/2026/QD-TTg, signed April 30 and taking effect July 1, designates ten technology groups as being “strategic.” The focus list is for digital tech (including AI, cloud, IoT and blockchain), semiconductors, “next-generation” mobile networks, robotics, advanced biotech, energy and materials, cybersecurity and quantum, marine and subsurface, aerospace, and high-speed rail. The list will probably be a good indication about how the state wants resources allocated, and is giving a hint to investors about which sectors are going to see preferential treatment. Intel is already reading the room, as it sent donated equipment to Saigon Hi-Tech Park and Vietnam National University Hanoi to support training for chip packaging and the testing of engineers.
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (two product groups), Vietnam Investment Review (Intel headcounts)
Hanoi Finds Religion on Piracy, Right on Cue
A 24-day crackdown on pirated films, music, and counterfeit goods kicks off today, and agencies have been told to find at least 20% more violations than they did in May of last year. Deputy Prime Minister Ho Quoc Dung issued the order that tells police, customs, border guards, and market surveillance organs to work together. Washington has designated Vietnam a "Priority Foreign Country" in its latest IP enforcement report, flagging "persistent failure" on a trade relationship that currently has Vietnam's surplus with the US bigger than China's. Hanoi's foreign ministry has asked for an "objective assessment" of its (apparently renewed) efforts.
Read more: VnExpress (ministry roles), Japan Times (tariff threat), VnExpress (Hanoi rebuttal)
Incumbents Pull Up the Ladder
VinFast, Thaco, and TC Group have asked the Prime Minister to keep auto manufacturing in the "conditional business" category. That request is in opposition to a Finance Ministry proposal that would remove licensing requirements for vehicle production, assembly, and imports. The three incumbents insist that the rules are needed for consumer safety and technical accountability, not market insulation (pearl-clutching!). They say that factory standards, warranty infrastructure, and spare-parts networks are necessary safeguards rather than red tape. In their defense, however, it seems that the Ministry of Industry and Trade is also wary, and has gone on record to say that deregulation could invite Chinese producers to move low-value assembly into Vietnam to get around rules of origin (a shift that would likely result in trade investigations). The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the other hand, has been supportive of the Finance Ministry's path.
Read more: Vietnam Insiders
Hanoi Trims 890 Pieces of Red Tape
Eight government resolutions have resulted in the scrapping of 890 business conditions, removed 184 administrative procedures, and simplified up to 394 more. Compliance time and costs are expected to be reduced by half compared to the 2024 burden, with the trend being a move away from pre-approval toward post-supervision review.
Read more: Vietnam Briefing
Pham Nhat Vuong Builds the Nation So the Nation Doesn't Have to
VinSpeed broke ground last month on a 120-kilometer high-speed rail line that will run from Hanoi to Ha Long. The trip in promised in less than 30 minutes at a cost of $5.59 billion, privately funded except for $390 million in state-covered site clearance. That is in addition to a $53 billion Olympic sports park that Vingroup is building in southern Hanoi, anchored by a 135,000-seat stadium shaped like a Dong Son drum. On paper that, that would best India's Narendra Modi Stadium by 3,000 seats and rival Pyongyang's Rungrado. Both projects feed into To Lam's $280 billion infrastructure push, which resulted in the announcement of breaking of ground on 550 projects last year. Vingroup pulled its bid for the $94 billion Hanoi-to-Ho Chi Minh City bullet train in December.
Read more: VnExpress (completion timeline), ABC (stadium roof, GDP target)
Forty Thousand Stores, Now Hunting Number Forty Thousand and One
Meiyijia, China's 40,000-store convenience chain, has opened three Hanoi locations under a new overseas brand called Ohmee, its first retail outposts outside China. The company crossed the 20,000 store count in 2020 and then doubled that again in less than five years, and it plans to run the same franchise playbook abroad that helped it succeed in China. The competition in Vietnam isn't soft, though, as Circle K, GS25, and FamilyMart together take in more than nearly three-quarters of convenience store revenue between them. The top operators have been fortifying their positions through what one local research outfit calls a "flight to quality."
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review
Kredivo Buys Vietnam's Original Neobank
Indonesia's Kredivo Group has bought Timo Digital Bank, Vietnam's first digital banking platform. The fintech already runs buy-now-pay-later and personal loans in Vietnam through local banking partners, but its acquisition of a full-service retail bank will let it do more with its credit products. Founded in 2015, Timo was developed by BV Bank. Phoenix Holdings and VinaCapital are expected to stay on as minority shareholders, Phoenix chairman Henry Nguyen, VinaCapital CEO Don Lam, and VinaCapital asset management CEO Brook Taylor will be added to the Kredivo Vietnam board.
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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