Vietnam Economic Growth 2025: Strong Breakthrough Amid Global Downturn Forecasts

The Secret To Breakthrough: Institutions, Infrastructure, And Human Resources

To realize this ambitious goal, the Prime Minister emphasized that Vietnam is actively implementing three crucial strategic breakthroughs:

Institutional Breakthrough: This is considered the “bottleneck of bottlenecks,” the “breakthrough of breakthroughs,” and a pivotal driving force and resource for development. Vietnam aims to fundamentally remove institutional bottlenecks by 2025, transforming institutions into a superior competitive advantage.

Infrastructure Breakthrough: Logistics costs account for 17-18% of Vietnam’s GDP, significantly higher than the global average of 10-11%, reducing the competitiveness of Vietnamese goods. To address this, the government is focusing on developing strategic infrastructure across all five modes of transport:

• Roads: Completing at least 3,000 km of expressways and 1,000 km of coastal roads this year.
• Railways: Deploying the North-South high-speed railway project, connecting routes with China, thereby expanding international connections to Central Asia and Europe, developing urban railways, and upgrading existing railway systems.
• Inland Waterways: Concentrating development in the Mekong Delta – an area with significant advantages in this sector.
• Aviation: Building, expanding, and upgrading strategic airports capable of accommodating the largest aircraft, developing the national fleet, and fostering more airlines to increase competition for the benefit of the people.
• Seaports: Developing major seaports such as Lach Huyen, Cai Mep-Thi Vai, Can Gio, Hon Khoai, etc., capable of receiving large vessels. Concurrently, there will be synchronized investment in healthcare, education, culture, sports, social infrastructure, as well as digital transformation, science and technology, and climate change adaptation infrastructure.

Human Resources Breakthrough: Shifting from primarily knowledge-based training to comprehensive skills training, aiming to build a workforce of international caliber, meeting integration requirements, and enhancing labor productivity.

“Special Conditions Require Special Solutions”

The Prime Minister stressed: “In difficult conditions, other countries are lowering growth forecasts, but we dare to go against that. Special conditions require special solutions.” To achieve these ambitious goals, the Prime Minister called upon all sectors and levels to be united and of one mind, with high determination, great efforts, and decisive, effective actions. The working motto needs to be clear: “clear on people, clear on tasks, clear on time, clear on responsibilities, clear on products, clear on authority,” and “think far, think deep, act big.”

Positive Growth Forecasts From International Organizations

Despite Vietnam’s challenging goals, major international organizations maintain an optimistic outlook on Vietnam’s economic prospects:

The World Bank (WB) forecasts Vietnam’s real GDP to grow by 5.8% in 2025, and further increase to 6.1% in 2026 and 6.4% in 2027. The WB recommends that Vietnam needs a more stable international economic environment, alongside domestic reform efforts to boost productivity, invest in human capital, and green the economy.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) forecasts Vietnam’s GDP to grow by 6.6% in 2025 and reach 6.5% in 2026, following a strong 7.1% increase in 2024. The ADB also noted that global trade tensions could affect Vietnam’s export-oriented manufacturing sector this year, even though total import-export turnover in Q1/2025 reached 202.52 billion USD, up 13.7% year-on-year.

With its strategic vision and breakthrough solutions, Vietnam is steadily moving forward on the path to realizing its high economic growth targets, affirming its position and development potential for the future.