After nearly 40 years of renovation, foreign investment has become an important driving force of the Vietnamese economy. The FDI sector supplements capital, expands exports, forms many key industries, creates millions of jobs and brings Vietnam to participate more deeply in the global production chain. However, when FDI has become a large component of the economy, the question cannot be just "how many billion USD can be attracted", but must be: What does that capital flow leave for the economy, for Vietnamese businesses and for Vietnamese workers?
The core issue today is the quality of spillover. A large-scale FDI project is only truly meaningful when it creates a production ecosystem around it; when domestic enterprises can participate in the supply chain; when Vietnamese workers not only do simple steps but are trained in skills, access to technology, industrial discipline and modern management methods. If FDI still mainly relies on cheap labor, land incentives, tax incentives and processing and assembly, then the value left for the economy will be thin, and workers will hardly have a leap in wages and professional position.
From the perspective of workers, these goals must be reflected in the 3 closest measures: Is employment sustainable, does wage increase according to productivity, are workers better trained and protected in the process of technology transformation? An economy cannot be considered successful if it attracts a lot of capital but workers are still trapped in low-income jobs, fewer vocational training opportunities, and fewer opportunities for promotion.
New generation FDI must be capital flows with commitments to technology transfer, advanced labor standards, environmental responsibility, linkages with Vietnamese enterprises and substantive contributions to the budget, productivity, and labor skills. Investment incentives, if any, must be linked to output results: Localization rate, level of technology transfer, labor training costs, job quality, labor safety standards and environmental responsibility.
Therefore, FDI attraction policies need to shift from competition with "cheap prices" to competition with "capacity". No locality should consider cheap labor as a long-term advantage. Sustainable advantages must be synchronous infrastructure, transparent procedures, trained human resources, professional business support service systems, stable energy, public data and policy implementation discipline. When the investment environment is transparent and predictable, Vietnam does not need to lower standards to attract capital; on the contrary, it can raise standards to select investors that are more suitable for national development goals.
Another key point is the role of trade union organizations and the labor policy system. In FDI enterprises, workers often face high requirements for discipline, productivity, working time, skills and ability to adapt to new technologies. Therefore, attracting high-quality FDI must go hand in hand with substantive collective bargaining, fair wages, safety, occupational hygiene, housing welfare, kindergartens, grassroots health and labor retraining when production lines change.
In the context of rapid green transformation and digital transformation, the requirement for labor retraining is even more urgent. Processing and manufacturing industries continue to attract the majority of FDI capital flows. In the first 5 months of 2026 alone, the processing and manufacturing industry accounted for 70.4% of total newly granted and additional capital; newly granted capital into processing and manufacturing reached 9.64 billion USD, accounting for 65% of total newly registered capital. If Vietnam does not prepare a force of technical workers, practical engineers, intermediate administrators and research and development teams, it will be difficult to fully utilize the new FDI wave.
FDI policy must therefore be designed as a human development policy. Each large project needs to be evaluated not only by registered capital, land use area or export turnover, but by the number of quality jobs created, average salary, proportion of trained workers, proportion of Vietnamese suppliers participating, level of energy saving, environmental standards and contribution to national industrial capacity.
Resolution No. 10-NQ/TW opens up a new mindset: FDI is not just an external capital source, but a test of the internal capacity of the economy. If internal strength is weak, FDI can create growth but spread limitedly. If internal strength is strong, FDI will become a catalyst for Vietnamese businesses to grow, Vietnamese workers to be better and the Vietnamese economy to be more self-reliant.
Vietnam does not refuse large-scale FDI, but does not trade development quality for capital at all costs. Foreign capital flows are only truly meaningful when contributing to creating better jobs, more worthy wages, higher skills, deeper participation of Vietnamese businesses and a better resilience of the economy.
New generation FDI, in the final analysis, must start and end in people. When workers improve their skills, domestic enterprises are connected, technology is transferred and development standards are raised, then FDI will not only be a capital flow into Vietnam, but become a driving force to bring Vietnam up in the global value chain.
Attracting high-quality FDI must go hand in hand with substantive collective bargaining, fair wages, safety, occupational health, housing welfare, kindergartens, grassroots health and labor retraining when production lines change".
