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Upper-Middle-Income Bar Met Four Years Early
The World Bank's July 1 update gets Vietnam into the upper-middle-income bracket for fiscal 2027, clearing the $4,636 GNI per capita floor four years ahead of the Communist Party's timetable. The reclassification rests on 2025 income data. The same cycle update also moved the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Jordan and Micronesia up a tier. The bigger number is set for the year 2045. Party targets call for high-income status by then, and the Academy of Finance calculates that Vietnam needs at least 5 percent average yearly GDP growth from 2026 through 2044. Interestingly, even 8 percent growth would only move the finish line up a single year. Upper-middle-income status will also start phasing out the cheap financing that came with the lower tier, just at the moment that Hanoi is trying to raise $1.2 trillion in private capital by 2030.
Read more: VnEconomy
SCB Sees 9.5% Growth, Below Hanoi Target
Standard Chartered Bank is expecting to see 9.5% GDP growth in 2026, a bigger print that UOB's 8.5% call, and SCB is crediting a manufacturing recovery, services and a wave of infrastructure spending for the lift. The bank also cut its inflation forecast to 4.4% and says that it expects the State Bank of Vietnam to hold rates steady. Nine and a half percent is still short of the double-digit figure Hanoi’s treated as a political imperative since To Lam became Party chief in mid-2024, however, but StanChart has penciled in 11% for 2027.
Read more: VnExpress (economist comments), Fulcrum (credit targets)
Chips Move Up On the Priority List
The Ministry of Industry and Trade wants semiconductors, rare earths, high-tech electronics and offshore wind added to a draft Law on Key Industries, moving chips into the same legal category as steel and railways for the first time. The Ministry of Justice published the dossier on Tuesday, the same day QTSC and the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association signed a cooperation deal for business networking, R&D, technology transfer and workforce development.
Ho Chi Minh City isn’t waiting on Hanoi's lawyers. It wants 9,000 semiconductor workers trained by 2030, backed by a proposed $5 million chip design fund and a five-year personal income tax exemption for experts at Saigon Hi-Tech Park and for semiconductor startups. The city is already host to 54 semiconductor projects worth more than $5.1 billion.
Read more: VnEconomy (priority industries), VnEconomy (Singapore trade), Tuoi Tre (tax break), TechNode Global (FPT training deal)
US Halves Plywood Duty, Keeps China Locked Out
The US Department of Commerce cut its final antidumping duty on Vietnamese hardwood plywood to 90.12%, down from a preliminary 196.14%, after auditors spent June combing through the books of Nhat Duy and Trieu Thai Son. Their cooperation now is to the benefit of everyone else in the country. The duty will require a cash deposit of $90,120 on every $100,000 shipment, which is steep when compared against export margins of 5 to 6%, but survivable for an industry that shipped $9.46 billion of wood products into the US last year.
China got no such break. Its two biggest mills refused to answer Commerce's questionnaire, leaving the whole industry locked at a 187.27% dumping rate plus an 88.96% subsidy duty if the ITC finds injury by September 4. Indonesian suppliers settled on between 15.40% and 84.94%, with most at 18.10%.
Read more: Woodcentral (Indonesian rates), Fordaq (cash deposits)
Hanoi Prices a Crypto Trade
Decree 284, issued July 16, sets unlicensed crypto trading fines at VND 30 million to 50 million (about $1,140 to $1,900). Companies offering or advertising crypto services without a license will be liable for fines of up to VND 200 million ($7,600). The rules will come into effect September 1 and target the millions of Vietnamese using Binance, OKX and Bybit in a market that is ranked fourth globally for crypto adoption. The obvious problem is that the Ministry of Finance has not yet licensed a single domestic exchange, even though five applicants including VPBank-connected CAEX and Techcombank-connected TCEX cleared initial review in May. Deputy Finance Minister Nguyen Duc Chi says he’s aiming for a third-quarter launch.
Read more: The Block (company fines), TradingView (Bybit expansion), VnEconomy (RWA sandbox)
VinFast Bets on Hatchback to Break Even by 2027
VinFast delivered 17,955 vehicles in June, meaning that first-half volume was a heady 115,916 units, an almost three-quarter increase from a year earlier and the first time any automaker has cleared 100,000 domestic deliveries in a Vietnamese half-year. The company expects to break even at home by 2027 and turn a global profit shortly after.
The bet rests heavily on the VF 2, a VND188 million ($7,139!) hatchback that took about 29,000 orders in its first three days on sale. The optimism needs to perhaps be tempered by a Q1 net loss of VND28.1 trillion, almost three-fifths wider than a year earlier, and an unresolved North Carolina lawsuit that wants to reclaim the site of VinFast's planned US factory.
Read more: Bloomberg (Pham), Yahoo Finance (revenue outlook), Just Auto (factory plan)
Vietnam Airlines Adds 19 More 737 MAX Leases
Vietnam Airlines is leasing 19 more Boeing 737 MAX 8s on top of the 50 it already has on order, bringing its planned fleet of the type to 69. The aircraft will come from three lessors (10 from SMBC Aviation Capital, five from Phoenix Aviation Capital and four from Avolon). Deliveries start in 2028.
The narrowbodies are expected to fly domestic and short- to medium-haul international routes. They will crack open a narrowbody fleet currently made up entirely of Airbus jets. The carrier reported a VND3.95 trillion ($150.1 million) pre-tax profit in Q1 2026 but says performance has been hurt since April by jet fuel prices. Domestic passenger growth has stalled to almost nothing in the first half of 2026, but international traffic rose more than 15% to 26.2 million.
Read more: Aerospace Global News (fuel efficiency), Breaking Travel News (chairman), Tuoi Tre (route growth), VnExpress (cargo), Aviation Week (seat share)
Wage Council Backs Minimum Wage Bump for ‘27
The National Wage Council has backed a 7.8% minimum wage rise for January 1, 2027, up slightly over the 7.2% increase that took effect this January. Monthly floors would go up between VND340,000 and VND390,000 ($12.94 to $14.85) depending on region. Zone 1 includes Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Government approval is still pending, but if signed off, it would be the largest increase in two years.
Read more: VnEconomy
USDA Puts Cash Into Tilapia to Displace China
The USDA is funding a $15.6 million project in nine provinces in the Mekong and Red River deltas to lift tilapia output to 1.21 million tons and $1.25 billion in revenue by 2030. Exports to the US reached $53 million in 2025, up 173 percent year on year, making America the largest buyer. Hanoi's fisheries department is clear that the move is to try and partly replace what US importers currently buy from China.
Read more: Tuoi Tre
Grab Plugs Into EV Charging With EBOOST Stake
Grab has taken a stake in charging firm EBOOST, terms undisclosed, with plans to grow the network from about 2,500 ports today to more than 6,000 by early 2028. Almost half are expected to show up in Hanoi under a June 2026 agreement with the city's Department of Construction to build shared public charging that drivers can find, use and pay for through the Grab Driver app.
EBOOST went live inside the app in April 2026, and of the more than 400 ports connected to date, more than 70 percent of drivers who plug in once return within a week. Thousands more ports have been sized for electric motorbikes, the workhorse of Grab's driver fleet, to be rolled out in the next wave.
Read more: TechNode Global
Security Min's Tech Arm Takes On HCMC Metro
GTEL, the tech arm of the Ministry of Public Security, signed on July 17 to handle system integration and technology transfer for Ho Chi Minh City's metro network, starting with Line 2 and extending itself out to projects scheduled through 2030. The scope included signaling, power supply, fare collection and an eventual integrated control center for the planned 1,000km network. No foreign vendors were named and no procurement timeline was shared. City vice chairman Hoang Nguyen Dinh said raising the localization rate would cut costs and protect “nationally important infrastructure.”
Read more: VnExpress
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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