(Mr): Phung Xuan Minh. [Chairman of the Board of Directors of PT Group & Saigon Ratings].
Resolution 10-NQ/TW of the Politburo marks a shift from the mindset of“attracting FDI to supplement capital”to the mindset of“developing high-quality FDI to upgrade the capacity of the economy.” The resolution clearly states that the foreign-invested economy not only supplements medium and long-term capital, but also serves as a channel for receivingadvanced technology, modern management, training human resources, expanding markets, and participating in global supply chains.
A crucial new development is the shift from attracting investment based on administrative boundaries to attracting investment based onindustry clusters, value chains, and innovation ecosystems; and the shift from input incentives to support linked to committed results such as technology, localization, R&D, green transformation, digital transformation, and linkages with domestic businesses.
Part 1: The current situation of attracting FDI in Vietnam
After nearly 40 years of reform and international integration, foreign direct investment (FDI) has become one of the key drivers of growth, economic restructuring, and enhancing Vietnam’s position in the global value chain. In this process, the foreign-invested sector not only supplements medium and long-term capital resources for the economy but also contributes to expanding export markets, forming key industries, creating jobs, promoting technology transfer, and gradually integrating Vietnam more deeply into the international production network.
However, in the new context, as Vietnam moves towards a growth model based on science and technology, innovation, digital transformation, green transformation, and enhanced strategic autonomy, the requirements for FDI flows are no longer limited to scale or the number of projects. This is precisely why Resolution 10-NQ/TW was issued, setting a major direction: raising FDI standards to elevate the Vietnamese economy.
1. With the increasing scale of FDI inflows, Vietnam continues to be an attractive destination for international investors.
Overall, Vietnam has achieved very significant results in attracting FDI. To date, Vietnam has more than 46,500 active FDI projects, with a total registered capital of over US$543 billion; cumulative implemented capital has reached approximately US$357.6 billion. The FDI sector currently contributes over 20% of GDP, about 70% of export turnover, and creates jobs for millions of workers. These figures show that FDI has become an important and inseparable part of the national economy.
In 2025 alone, total registered FDI capital in Vietnam reached US$38.42 billion, a slight increase compared to the previous year. Notably, implemented FDI capital reached US$27.62 billion, a 9% increase and the highest level in the 2021-2025 period. This reflects the confidence of international investors in Vietnam’s investment environment and shows that projects have been and are being implemented more effectively, rather than just remaining on paper commitments.
In the first five months of 2026, FDI inflows continued their positive growth momentum. Total registered capital for new projects, adjustments, and capital contributions/share purchases by foreign investors reached US$24.81 billion, a 34.9% increase compared to the same period last year. Newly registered capital reached US$14.84 billion; implemented FDI reached US$9.75 billion, a 9.6% increase. This is a positive sign amidst increasingly fierce global competition for investment, ongoing restructuring of international supply chains, and the ongoing efforts by economies to attract high-quality capital.
By sector, the processing and manufacturing industry continues to be the strongest magnet for FDI. In 2025, this sector accounted for a large proportion of newly registered and disbursed capital. In the first five months of 2026, the processing and manufacturing industry continued to lead with $9.64 billion in newly registered capital, accounting for 65% of the total newly registered capital. This shows that FDI is playing a crucial role in the industrialization and modernization process, especially in manufacturing, export, electronics, equipment, components, and supporting industries.
Regarding investment countries and territories, FDI into Vietnam still mainly comes from Asian partners such as Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. These are economies with close trade, investment, and supply chain relationships with Vietnam. However, a new requirement is that Vietnam needs to increase the proportion of capital flows from developed economies, leading technology corporations, and investors with capabilities in technology, management, innovation, and sustainable development.
2. FDI makes a significant contribution to economic growth, exports, and structural transformation.
It is undeniable that FDI has made a significant contribution to Vietnam’s economic development. Firstly, FDI provides a crucial source of capital for development investment, given the ever-increasing capital needs of the economy. This capital has contributed to the formation of numerous industrial parks, export processing zones, production centers, and important export industry clusters.
Secondly, FDI contributes to promoting the shift in economic structure towards industrialization and modernization. From an economy primarily based on agriculture and resource exploitation, Vietnam has gradually developed large-scale industrial production sectors, especially in electronics, textiles, footwear, machinery, equipment, components, food processing, and manufacturing. Many localities, thanks to attracting FDI, have transformed significantly, becoming major industrial and export centers of the country.
Thirdly, FDI contributes to expanding export markets and enhancing Vietnam’s participation in global supply chains. Multinational corporations investing in Vietnam often bring with them their customer networks, management systems, production standards, and global supply chains. As a result, goods produced in Vietnam have the opportunity to access large markets such as the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN.
Fourth, the FDI sector has contributed to job creation, labor skills training, improved industrial work ethics, and the gradual dissemination of modern management standards. Many Vietnamese workers have gained access to advanced production processes and international standards regarding quality, safety, environment, productivity, and labor discipline. These are factors of long-term value for the upgrading of the national workforce.
However, in evaluating the effectiveness of FDI, Vietnam needs to look more deeply into the quality of growth. The issue is not just about large export turnover or an increase in the number of projects, but about the actual added value retained within the Vietnamese economy, the level of participation of domestic enterprises in FDI supply chains, the ability to transfer technology, the localization rate, and the capacity to form Vietnamese enterprises that are competitive at the regional and global levels.
3. Limitations and challenges necessitate raising FDI standards.
Alongside significant achievements, Vietnam’s FDI attraction also reveals numerous limitations. One of the major issues is that the quality and effectiveness of attracting, managing, and utilizing FDI are not commensurate with the country’s potential, advantages, and new development requirements.
The proportion of projects that are labor-intensive, resource-intensive, land-intensive, energy-intensive, and involved in processing and assembly remains high. In many industries, Vietnam mainly participates in low value-added stages, while high-value stages such as research and development, design, core technology, branding, distribution, and supply chain management are largely outsourced. This is a major bottleneck if Vietnam wants to overcome the middle-income trap and move up to the group of countries with higher industrial capabilities.
Another limitation is the weak linkage between FDI enterprises and domestic businesses. Many Vietnamese businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are limited in terms of capital scale, technology, management capacity, quality standards, and the ability to meet the requirements of multinational corporations. Therefore, despite strong FDI growth, the number of Vietnamese businesses becoming high-level suppliers in FDI chains remains low.
Technology transfer is also an issue that needs to be addressed frankly. In many cases, FDI helps Vietnam access more modern production processes, but the level of core technology transfer remains limited. Without appropriate selection, screening, and binding policies, Vietnam may continue to attract many large-scale projects in terms of capital, but without creating a leap forward in productivity, technology, and the self-reliance of the economy.
The international context is also creating new pressures. While global FDI flows show signs of recovery, investment activity remains fragmented and competition is increasingly fierce. Countries in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India are all actively attracting FDI in semiconductors, data centers, electric vehicles, clean energy, artificial intelligence, and high-tech industries. This requires Vietnam to move beyond competing primarily on low labor costs, tax incentives, or land availability, and instead compete based on institutions, infrastructure, human resources, clean energy, industrial ecosystem, and technological absorption capacity.
From the above situation, it can be seen that Resolution 10-NQ/TW of the Politburo was issued at the right time, when Vietnam needed a strategic shift in the development of its foreign-invested economy. This shift is from “attracting FDI at all costs” to “selective attraction”; from “quantity of projects” to “quality, efficiency, and added value”; from “processing and assembly” to “technology, innovation, and supply chain linkages”; and from “FDI as a supplementary source of capital” to “FDI as a driving force for enhancing national capacity”.
In this new era of development, the crucial task is not only to keep Vietnam attractive to international investors, but also to ensure that every FDI flow into Vietnam contributes to improving the production capacity, technological capacity, management capacity, and competitiveness of Vietnamese businesses. This is also the core spirit of the theme: Resolution 10-NQ/TW: Raising FDI standards to elevate the Vietnamese economy.
