Business News

Vietnam is moving to widen market access, improve investment incentives, and streamline procedures, with greater support tied to investors’ actual commitments and results, as part of the law on amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Investment. The proposal was mentioned at the sixth session of the National Assembly Standing Committee in Hanoi on September 30, on amending the Law on Investment.

The monthly statistical data presents current economic and social statistics on a variety of subjects illustrating crucial economic trends and developments, including production of agriculture, forestry and fishery, business registration situation, investment, government revenues and expenditures, trade, prices, transport and tourism and so on.

Việt Nam has revised the plan to improve its sovereign credit rating which sets a target of reaching investment-grade status by 2030 while linking the effort more closely to economic growth, innovation, digital transformation and fiscal sustainability. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyễn Văn Thắng has signed Decision 1919/QĐ-TTg amending the Government’s 2022 scheme on improving the country’s sovereign credit rating through 2030.

Hà Nội attracted an estimated US$4.07 billion in foreign investment in the first nine months of 2026, reaching 90.4 per cent of the city's full-year target, according to data released by the Hanoi Financial Department. The figure includes $676 million in newly registered capital, $691 million in additional capital and $2.7 billion from foreign investors' capital contributions and share purchases.

China has emerged as Việt Nam’s second-largest rice export market after spending nearly US$505 million to import over one million tonnes of Vietnamese rice in the first eight months of 2026, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. During the same period last year, China imported just over 565,000 tonnes, valued at $286.7 million. With the surge, China rose from fourth place during the same period in 2025 to the second position, just behind the Philippines.

HCM City’s economy grew 9.86 per cent in the third quarter from a year earlier, its strongest quarterly growth in about a decade, the city’s Statistics Office said. The growth lifted the city's gross regional domestic product (GRDP) in the first nine months of 2026 to 9.06 per cent year-on-year. Services remained the main driver, growing 9.95 per cent in the third quarter and accounting for 51.9 per cent of overall growth. 

Việt Nam returned to a goods trade surplus in September after nine consecutive months of deficit, but remained in a US$19.42 billion deficit for the first nine months of this year, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said in its socio-economic report on October 3. The country posted a trade surplus of $1.27 billion in September, with total trade of goods reaching $117.69 billion, up 7.3 per cent from August and 42.4 per cent from the same month last year.

The Industrial Production Index (IIP) rose 12.3 per cent in January - September over the same period last year, the fastest nine-month growth since 2019, with the manufacturing and processing remaining the main driver of expansion, the National Statistics Office said at a briefing on October 3. The IIP rose 14.8 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.