According to data from the Statistics Office (Ministry of Finance), foreign direct investment (FDI) made in Vietnam in 2025 is estimated to reach 27.62 billion USD, an increase of 9% compared to the previous year. This is the highest amount of foreign direct investment made in the past 5 years.
In which: Processing and manufacturing industry reached 22.88 billion USD, accounting for 82.8% of total foreign direct investment capital realized; real estate business activities reached 1.93 billion USD, accounting for 7.0%; production and distribution of electricity, gas, hot water, steam and air conditioning reached 914.9 million USD, accounting for 3.3%.
According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thuong Lang - an economic expert, the above data clearly reflects the confidence of international investors in the business environment, macroeconomic stability and long-term growth prospects of Vietnam's economy. "The most prominent point is the'overwhelming' of the processing and manufacturing industry sector with 22.88 billion USD, accounting for 82.8% of total FDI capital. This structure shows that Vietnam continues to play an important manufacturing center role in the regional and global supply chain, especially in the context of value chain restructuring, shifting investment away from traditional markets.
According to this expert, FDI into Vietnam in 2025 will not only "increase in quantity" but also show a trend of "improvement in quality", with a focus on production and essential infrastructure. The challenge is how to transform this capital flow into a driving force to improve productivity, innovate technology and capacity of domestic enterprises, instead of just stopping at the role of processing and assembly. If well utilized, FDI will continue to be an important pillar for medium and long-term growth of the Vietnamese economy.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thuong Lang assessed that Vietnam is entering phase 3 of attracting FDI. Phase 1 is calculated from before joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Each year Vietnam attracts an average of 2 billion USD of implemented capital. This is a process that both tests policies and values attracting investment in breadth, values the number of projects and capital scale both registered and implemented, but has not really paid attention to quality.
Phase 2, calculated from after joining the WTO to 2020, this is a period with high growth in attracting FDI, averaging over 10 billion USD per year, and the quality of FDI has been valued.
Phase 3 from 2021 to now, each year attracts an average of 25-30 billion USD of FDI and this is a phase that pays more attention to FDI quality. In addition to using more cheap labor, FDI also pays more attention to attracting highly skilled workers and developing high-quality human resources.
Research and development departments of large corporations have been built in Vietnam associated with training and technology transfer to enterprises supplying components and details. The number of patents registered in Vietnam by FDI enterprises is increasing rapidly.
Environmentally polluting projects have been refused and high standards on environmental protection and net emission reduction are emphasized in investor selection, encouraging and supporting capital increase, expanding investment and business scale. In particular, export projects almost all fully meet export goods standards with strict standards of the EU, Japan, Korea and the United States" - Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thuong Lang emphasized.
Investment sectors are gradually and correctly shifting from production - manufacturing accounting for about 80% of total attracted capital with the use of a lot of cheap labor to focusing on high-tech products such as orienting towards production of basic materials, sophisticated products of electronics industry, artificial intelligence, using green energy, renewable energy, supply chains are tightly controlled at all stages, net emissions are zero, meeting strict ESG standards (environment, society, governance). Investment sectors associated with modern technology advances, high technology, meeting sustainable development standards are creating conditions for the formation of a market for 11 core technologies that Vietnam is strategically mastering.
That is the expression that FDI is adjusting in the right direction with Vietnam's strategic development orientation, which will definitely turn Vietnam into a place to attract high-quality FDI with large investment capital flows from leading corporations in the world in high technology and modern industry" - Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thuong Lang affirmed.
