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To Lam Leaves Canberra With Seven Pacts and a Kangaroo Deal
To Lam departed Australia with seven cooperation agreements and three joint statements. The headline deal is a five-year digital economy pact for AI, semiconductors, cross-border data flows and undersea cable investment. Finance Minister Ngo Van Tuan also met Treasurer Jim Chalmers in Sydney to move a 2024-28 financial cooperation MoU forward and line up coordination for APEC 2027. Coast guards, border forces, health ministries and vocational education agencies each got their own deals, in addition to an amended air services protocol and an agriculture MoU. Two-way trade was more than $14 billion in 2025, which is a little below a $20 billion target, and Hanoi gave Australian kangaroo and deer meat market access that’s going to be worth up to half a million AUD (~US$350,000), a year to exporters.
Read more: SCMP (kangaroo deer meat), Vietnam News (APEC 2027 hosting), Vietnam News (EQ Resources Turnbull), TechNode Global (digital pact signatories), Tuoitre (trade growth)
Drone Scare Snarls Tan Son Nhat Flights
Tan Son Nhat briefly stopped flights twice after pilots reported drones while approaching and leaving Ho Chi Minh City. Accounts disagree on the exact times, flight numbers and altitude. Tuoi Tre said dozens of flights were affected and three emergency declarations followed, but VnExpress put the disruption at 22 flights. The scare comes as officials are working to set up a national aviation security and facilitation committee. It is more bureaucracy, but it seems like it might come in handy.
Read more: Vietnam News (financial center pitch), VnEconomy (financial center roadmap), Tuoitre (drone timeline), VnExpress (flight disruption), VnEconomy (aviation security committee)
HCMC Tax Holiday Takes Aim at Singapore
The Vietnam International Financial Center opened this month in Ben Thanh, Saigon and Thu Thiem wards. The zones offer zero corporate income tax through 2030 and a flat 10 percent after that, which is being compared favorably with Singapore's 17 percent. Nguyen Huu Huan, vice chairman of the center's Operating Agency, said the legal legwork is done and the first membership applications will be due this month. Most young financial centers need five to seven years before capital shows up, but HCMC is aiming for several billion dollars in year one, then $10-15 billion a year, pulled first from global investment funds and international bond issuance instead of (slower) FDI. No word yet on which global institutions have applied.
Read more: Tuoitre, VnExpress (SIFEM partnership)
Bac Ninh Inherits Dongguan's Old Job
Fable Lubricants opened its first plant in Ho Chi Minh City in 2017 chasing customers out of Dongguan. By 2023 it needed a second one in Bac Ninh, where Chinese factory owners now arrive "in droves," according to founder Fu Mingdong. Some Chinese media already call the province the "Dongguan of 20 years ago." At Sembcorp's VSIP parks, the number of Chinese tenants rose from about one in 11 in 2021 to about 15 percent in 2025. At Hai Phong's DEEP C zones, they went from less than a tenth before the pandemic to about a fifth now. The arrivals are not the T-shirt stitchers of yesteryear - Luxshare and Goertek are growing their electronics production alongside the older labor-intensive crowd as Hanoi's semiconductor strategy leans on Chinese packaging giants like JCET and Tongfu. Beijing's Gao Jinlong said that China and Vietnam were "highly complementary," which is perhaps a nice way of to say that Vietnam brings cheap labor and engineers while China brings packaging technology and scale.
Read more: Vietnam News (Xi visit statement), Thinkchina (China import)
VinSpace Books a SpaceX Lift for 2027
VinSpace, the nine-month-old aerospace arm of Pham Nhat Vuong's Vingroup, has reserved a spot on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission in 2027 to put the country's first privately built satellites into orbit. VinSpace, capitalized at 300 billion dong (~$11.5M), is 71 percent owned by Vuong personally; Vingroup owns another 19 percent. Neither the number of satellites nor the contract value was published, and VinSpace has yet to say what the hardware will do beyond validating its own technology in orbit. The deal comes after Hanoi's February decision to let Starlink operate domestically, a move some analysts read as tariff diplomacy aimed at Washington, and comes as Vingroup is pushing further from real estate and retail into aerospace, telecom satellites and air cargo. Vietnam has managed two satellite launches previously, in 2008 and 2012. Both of the devices were government-run telecom birds.
Read more: AP News (founding date), Bangkok Post (value chain strategy), Qz (six business sectors), DW (signing date)
Hanoi Retires Doi Moi After 40 Years
Resolution 19-NQ/TW, adopted by the Party Central Committee's third plenum, formally retires the market-opening model that has run the economy since 1986. The Politburo's framing says Doi Moi has done its job. GDP per capita was up to roughly $5,000 in 2025 (more than the Philippines at $4,100 and close to Indonesia at $5,200, but still about a third of the global average and two-thirds of Thailand's level). The new resolution swaps cheap labor, capital and resource extraction for science, technology, data, talent and the private sector as growth drivers, and recasts the States role from controller to market-maker.
Read more: VietnamNet (global GDP rank), VnEconomy (net-zero 2050)
Hanoi Wants to Raise the Tax-Free Ceiling Tenfold
The Ministry of Finance is proposing to lift the revenue threshold for tax-exempt household businesses and small enterprises from VND1 billion to VND10 billion (~$381,000), four months after Decree 41 set the lower limit. The draft also proposes a 30 percent reduction in personal and corporate income tax for 2026 and 2027 for firms under that ceiling, and would raise the cap for simplified revenue-based tax filing from VND3 billion to VND10 billion a year. A VCCI survey found that almost three-fifths of household businesses are struggling with volatile input costs, and about a third are short on capital and staff.
Read more: VnEconomy
G42 Wires $1 Billion Into HCMC Server Farms
Abu Dhabi's G42 signed a $1 billion deal with FPT Corporation and Viet Thai Group to build three data centers, and joined a $2 billion hyperscale AI project in Ho Chi Minh City. Sembcorp's StarMason venture with BB Holdings has also won approval for a 90MW site of its own, and the IFC has floated up to $3 billion more for digital infrastructure. Southeast Asia already makes up about half of all data center capacity under construction in Asia-Pacific; Malaysia and Thailand lead the pack.
Read more: VnEconomy
Banks Are $103B Short on Deposits
The gap between outstanding loans and deposits has widened to VND2.7 quadrillion, or $103.3 billion, as credit growth has outrun deposit growth every year for the past five. The State Treasury raised only $709 million in 25 bond auctions in July, filling barely more than a quarter of what was offered; yields crept up across the curve. Seven months into this year, the Treasury has banked only $7.65 billion, or two-fifths of its 2026 target. ACB CEO Tu Tien Phat is pitching dollar loans at around 4 percent a year, roughly 6 percent once exchange-rate risk is priced in, to exporters who he thinks are flush with foreign-currency revenue, and five- to seven-year corporate bonds to everyone else. Vietravel chairman Nguyen Quoc Ky is not sold, warning that foreign-currency borrowing carries its own exposure. Luc wants VND700 trillion in infrastructure financing to pay for 18 projects over three years, separated from bank credit entirely so it stops competing for the same shrinking pool of capital.
Read more: Tuoitre (infrastructure financing plan), VnEconomy (bond auction yields)
Da Nang Bets $617M on Port and Airport
Da Nang's People's Council approved VND6.2 trillion, or $240 million, to finish shared infrastructure at Lien Chieu Port, the piece needed to move the city's petroleum and liquid cargo terminals out of Da Nang Bay and clear the way for outside investors to build their own berths. Hours later, ACV Da Nang said it will spend VND9.9 trillion, or $377 million, adding 42,000 square meters to Terminal 1, a building that has been running over capacity since it opened in 2011 at a cost of $51 million. Construction on the airport work is expected to run from Q3 2027 to Q1 2029. Da Nang has also floated a separate $10 billion plan to upgrade Chu Lai airport, 90 kilometers south, through 2050. No timeline yet on port terminal bidding.
Read more: VnEconomy (2026-2030 timeline), VnExpress (cargo terminal)
Cold Chain Costs Double the Rich-World Norm
Logistics eats up 16-20 percent of GDP, roughly double the 8-10 percent that the US and EU pay and more Thailand and China's 13-14 percent, according to World Bank figures. Refrigerated container rates rose from around $2,800 to a peak of $7,800 in May and June, and are still more than $5,000, squeezing seafood and produce exporters. Industry groups want more exporters to partner with professional logistics firms instead of building their own infrastructure, and to use digital tools for temperature monitoring, traceability and shipment tracking.
Read more: Vietnam News
Hai Phong Busts a $10-Million-a-Day USDT Pipeline
Hai Phong police held 32 people, nine on money laundering charges, after cracking a Chinese-run network that allegedly moved $7 million to $10 million in USDT a day for online gambling operations. Ringleader Hoang Hai Van reportedly cycled four to five digital wallets a day and swapped them all out weekly to bury the trail, while Vietnamese recruits opened bank accounts in their own names for about $190 a month. Investigators froze 2,003 accounts at 36 banks worth more than $114 million. The gambling operation is estimated to have generated tens of trillions of dong before being shut down.
Read more: Tuoitre
Changan's Deepal Badge in Hue Paperwork
Trademark filings show Changan Automobile registering the Deepal S05 and S07 nameplates, the clearest sign yet that the Chinese automaker hopes to build the models at Kim Long Motor's plant in Hue City. Both are C-segment SUVs offered as battery-electric or extended-range hybrids, with the S07's top BEV variant rated at 620km and its EREV version claiming a total range of more than 1,100km. Changan and Kim Long Motor signed a cooperation deal in early 2025 to build five- to seven-seat passenger cars at the Hue plant, but Kim Long has yet to confirm Deepal will be the badge on the line. That would be the fourth Chinese-branded EV maker arriving into a segment where VinFast, BYD and others are already fighting for the same buyers.
Read more: Tuoitre
Da Nang Starts Cutting Steel on Sub-Hunter
Song Thu Corporation has started cutting steel in Da Nang on what officials say is the country's largest and most advanced domestically designed frigate. The vessel is an anti-submarine ship built by Vietnamese engineers with weapons and gear mostly locally. The vessel is expected to carry AESA radar, air-defense missiles and advanced anti-ship missiles, much of it from state-owned Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group and defense ministry factories. Completion is expected in three years. Deputy Defense Minister Pham Hoai Nam attended the ceremony. No name for the ship yet.
Read more: Tuoitre (deputy minister quotes), Yahoo (South China Sea)
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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