Key View

• We maintain our forecast for the central bank to cut its policy rate from 4.5% to 4.0% by end-2024.
• We think the Bank will ease policy further to help ensure the economy meets the government’s GDP and credit growth targets, and relatively benign inflation will allow the Bank to cut.
• While recent dong weakness is a constraint, we

Latest Development: Viettel and Singtel are partnering to deploy the first subsea cable to directly connect Vietnam and Singapore. The new cable would enhance Vietnam’s international bandwidth capacity, which will be key in achieving its goal of becoming an alternative data centre hub within the east Asian region. The project also aligns with

Key View: We believe that local and national governments will move to support the development of Vietnam's passenger EV-focused charging network over 2024-2028, as local EV adoption continues and Vietnam's taxi fleets increasingly rely on EVs. While the current EV charging network remains somewhat sufficient, supporting electric taxis and home

Key View

• The economy outperformed our 4.7% growth forecast for 2023, expanding by a swifter 5.0% instead and pointing to stronger growth momentum than we previous thought.
• However, we are sticking to our 5.5% growth forecast for 2024. 
• One reason is that a likely global growth slowdown will weigh on external demand, and another is that

Latest Development: State-owned operator VNPT has called for the government to adjust the regulatory system to facilitate the development of Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, big data and AI service provision in Vietnam.

Forecast Implications: We see this as a positive development from the government to push for IoT infrastructure that would

The Latest: On November 14 2023, the Vietnam-based online payment platform ZaloPay announced a partnership with the Indonesia-based Southeast Asian superapp Gojek to allow users to utilise ZaloPay for on-demand food delivery services from the GoFood service on the Gojek app. 

Implications: ZaloPay is one of the most popular e-payment

Key View: Vietnamese household spending growth will improve over 2024 on the back of strong economic growth and its feed-through into higher disposable incomes. The main downside risk to our forecasts is a faster than expected depreciation of the dong, which will worsen inflationary pressures and likely cause the central bank to tighten its

Key View

• Vietnam will continue to attract interest from leading international businesses to invest in the domestic life sciences sector.
• Multinational pharmaceutical companies will increasingly invest in local drugmakers in Vietnam.
• However, macroeconomic concerns will pose a downside risk to government plans and investments. 

Key View

• We have revised our policy rate forecasts for Vietnam and now expect the refinancing rate to be left unchanged at 4.50% for the rest of 2023, before being cut by 50 basis points to 4.00% in 2024.
• This will be in response to a continued underperformance in the economy, as the drag from the real estate slump on lending activity is

Key View

• We have revised upwards our 2023 current account surplus forecast for Vietnam from 0.5% of GDP to 1.5%. In 2024, we expect the surplus to widen further to 2.0% of GDP.
• The near-term export outlook remains tepid, but we think that a recovery will materialise in H224 alongside a rebound in global demand, especially the US.
• Meanwhi