After Vietnam announced GDP growth in the third quarter of 2025, domestic and foreign international research organizations have adjusted their forecasts for Vietnam's economic growth in 2025.
Accordingly, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has raised its forecast for Vietnam's economic growth in 2025 from 6.6% to 6.7%. However, ADB forecasts that in 2026, Vietnam's GDP may decrease to 6%. Similarly, UOB Bank raised its forecast for Vietnam's GDP growth in 2025 from 6.9% to 7.5%.
Meanwhile, HSBC has raised its growth forecast for Vietnam to 7.9% for 2025 and 6.7% for 2026. HSBC emphasized: Vietnam's surprisingly 8.2% increase in the third quarter was "only of one class". This result is much higher than the market's expectations of 7.2% over the same period last year, making Vietnam once again the fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia.
The biggest surprise, according to HSBC experts, is the solidity of industries with an outside trade trend, reflected in the manufacturing and trading segments. Despite unpredictable fluctuations in the trading environment, industrial production in the third quarter increased by 10% compared to the same period last year. Trade also continued to explode with exports and imports growing nearly 20% over the same period last year.
This shows that Vietnam has increased its trade surplus with other trading partners outside the US, although the US is still the largest destination for exports from Vietnam with a third of the total market share.
In which, the main driving force of trade is electronic products. Vietnam's export growth to the US market continues to increase, showing another trend that has been observed across Asia: technology-rich economies are benefiting from increased demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, bringing a fiber optic support system to trade.
In addition to the solidity in trade, the report shows that the service sector continues to see strong growth. end-to- end retail sales also saw many significant improvements. Retail sales in the third quarter increased by 12% over the same period last year, narrowing the gap with the pre-pandemic trend to only 3% compared to 10% at the beginning of 2025.
Meanwhile, tourism-related sectors, including transportation and accommodation, are also witnessing a continuous explosion. Vietnam has now become a new favorite destination for Chinese tourists and is leading ASEAN in tourism recovery.
After welcoming 15 million tourists as of the third quarter, Vietnam is witnessing a return of tourists equivalent to 120% of the 2019 level. Although Vietnam does not depend on tourism as much as other countries such as Thailand, increasing competitiveness in the tourism sector can somewhat "protect" Vietnam from challenges in trade of goods.
Meanwhile, some other foreign organizations such as the World Bank (WB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are more cautious when forecasting Vietnam's economic growth in 2025.
In a report at the end of September 2025, the IMF forecast that Vietnam's economic growth will slow down to 6.5% in 2025 and continue to slow down in 2026 due to the year-long impact of new US tariffs and the end of most of the Government's one-time fiscal stimulus measures in 2025.
Meanwhile, Vietnam's GDP in 2025 is forecast by the World Bank to reach 6.6%, slowing down after a period of strong growth in the first half of the year. Exports are forecast to return to a stable growth rate, causing net contributions of exports to GDP to decrease.
