On May 4, 2026, credit rating agency Moody's announced the upgrade of Vietnam's outlook from "Stable" to "Proactive", while maintaining the national credit rating at Ba2.
According to Moody's assessment, raising the outlook reflects the organization's confidence in Vietnam's ability to improve its credit rating in the medium term. The quality of Vietnam's institutions and governance is being significantly improved through administrative procedure reform, law and the public sector, which began to be implemented from the end of 2024. The reform process is gradually bringing initial results, institutional restructuring is reducing administrative layers, merging ministries and strengthening coordination between government agencies, thereby contributing to improving the efficiency of project approval processes and management procedures.
These advances help improve institutional scores in Vietnam's credit rating dossiers, helping to stabilize the macroeconomy and minimize potential risks.
At the same time, the competitiveness of the Vietnamese economy continues to be strengthened through promoting digitization, infrastructure investment, improving the quality of human resources and developing the capital market. Moody's assessed that the risks from US trade protection measures have also decreased compared to previous expectations, while Vietnam has shown its recovery ability through strong economic growth and sustainable foreign direct investment flows, consolidating Vietnam's position in the global supply chain.
Affirming the credit rating at Ba2 reflects Moody's assessment that Vietnam's core credit rating strengths are still firmly preserved, further consolidating Vietnam's current credit rating. Vietnam's strong growth potential is still the main support, strengthened by diverse export base, recovering domestic demand and sustainable foreign direct investment flows, supporting macroeconomic stability improvement.
Vietnam's fiscal point continues to be a strength thanks to government debt maintained at a low and stable level, solid debt repayment capacity, reducing dependence on foreign mobilized capital, helping to reduce foreign currency risks and increase resilience to external risks.
Moody's assesses that Vietnam is resilient to shocks in energy prices, transportation costs and inflationary pressures due to geopolitical developments thanks to solid growth foundations, strong foreign economic buffers, low foreign exchange risks, and diverse energy and export structures. However, Moody's also noted that the risks of the banking system, the real estate market, and institutional shortcomings, although they have improved significantly, are factors hindering Vietnam's ability to upgrade its credit rating.
In a global context of many fluctuations and challenges, Moody's affirming Vietnam's national credit rating and raising the outlook to Positive (the only country assessed positively by Moody's in the Asia-Pacific Area (APAC) region) shows the international community's appreciation for the direction and administration efforts of the Party, National Assembly and Government of Vietnam to stabilize the macroeconomy and deeply reform the institutional system.
This is a premise for Vietnam to firmly step into a new era of development with the goal of striving to achieve a "double-digit" growth rate associated with growth model transformation, taking science, technology, innovation and digital transformation development as the main driving force; promptly and thoroughly removing bottlenecks; mobilizing, unblocking and quickly liberating all social resources.
The Ministry of Finance said it will continue to coordinate with Moody's, credit rating agencies and other international organizations to provide complete and updated information to serve the process of assessing Vietnam's credit records.
