Vietnam Moves to Host International Financial Centre (IFC)

Welcome back to another Dispatch from Vietnam.

I’ve recently moved down to Da Nang with my family, where the air is cleaner, the streets wider and the energy is phenomenal. Vietnam is billing Da Nang as a future regional financial centre and a green FinTech hub.

There’s a feeling of progress in the air here.

This takes us nicely into today’s main topic: Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has been pushing ahead with a steering committee to implement two International Financial Centers (IFCs) approved in the country last November. One in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and another later in Da Nang.

These would be similar in scope to the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) and hope to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure and other areas.

The plan would turn Ho Chi Minh City into a regional — and later global — center for transactions, banking, insurance, investment management and other financial services, helping to boost Vietnam’s economy as it diversifies away from manufacturing and agriculture.

Saigon as a Global Financial Center

Financial services represented 4.9% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2023. There is ample room for this to grow as the country is still in the early days of building out a robust financial sector.

The first IFC will comprise of three key stages:

1. A small financial centre, the first being in Ho Chi Minh City, by the end of 2025.
2. This will be followed by a regional financial centre of medium size by 2035.
3. And it will result in a large-scale global financial centre by 2045.

(Don’t you just love that long-term planning. Wouldn’t it be great if the West could still do that…)

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh hasn’t beaten around the bush when addressing how difficult this will be to pull off. But he digressed:

“No matter how difficult it is, it must be done,” he said. “Especially in the context that Vietnam has all the necessary conditions to establish an international financial centre.”

He went on to mention factors including a high GDP growth rate, international integration, and large-scale international trade —standing at $786 billion of import/export value in 2024.

Vietnam is on the Rise

A global financial centre is a bold goal. It will require reform, new policies, massive infrastructure development, an influx of talent, and a lot of investment. But if Vietnam has shown me anything over the last 9 years, it’s that when it wants to get sh*t done, it gets sh*t done.

That said, it will take more than an IFC to bring Vietnam into the next stage of its development.

The country’s wages and living standards are rapidly rising. It also has a rapidly declining birthrate and is at high risk of “getting old before getting rich” — which is an issue, in case you were wondering.

Vietnam knows it has to transition away from low-skill manufacturing and assembly and into more advanced manufacturing that will support blue-collar workers with higher wages while keeping the country competitive on a global stage — while also supporting the growth of a professional services sector to support all of this.

There is rapid progress being made on multiple fronts. But more needs to happen, and fast.

The new leadership in Hanoi has made bold moves, removing and merging entire government departments to boost efficiency and cut spending. Infrastructure projects, though often delayed, have been finished, including metro lines in Saigon and Hanoi, new bridges, and rapid progress on Long Thanh Airport.

It’s obvious that they take the country’s development seriously.

Sometimes you just sit back and think: “F*ck me, what an exciting place to be.”

As my home country of Britain trudges through stagnant growth, failing services and policies attacking businesses from all sides, watching a country like Vietnam surf an upward wave is brilliant and exhilarating.

It’s even better when you can be away from the pollution of the capital.

It’s not all roses and sunshine, of course. My wife and I left Hanoi because the air quality was damaging our family’s health and the traffic was stressing me out on a daily basis.

There’s a lot of work to do, but I think people don’t give the country enough credit for what it has already achieved. Plenty of other states —one nearby— are tearing themselves to pieces. Vietnamese policymakers might not always get it right, but they’re going in the right direction.

Keep an eye on Vietnam for the rest of the 20’s.

Onwards & upwards ???????