FDI capital flows shift and expand into new fields

Mr. Dominic Scriven shared at VLCA 2025. (Photo: Le Toan)

According to Mr. Dominic Scriven, the world situation is facing many challenges, including: currency-related issues; internal issues in each country; international issues between countries; climate change issues; and technology issues.

In Vietnam, the picture is somewhat more positive. Thanks to government support and management policies, growth in the quarters and for the whole year of 2025 remains relatively optimistic, although natural disasters may affect GDP.

Moving into 2026, the GDP growth target of 10% has been clearly stated, this is not just a matter of numbers but also a matter of trust, and trust will have a huge impact on growth results.

This goal is also linked to new policies, based on Resolution 68, which emphasizes the role of the private sector and encourages it to participate more strongly in development plans.

I would like to note that Vietnam’s private sector currently has about 500,000 companies and about 5 million individual business households. With the new tax policies, a part of the informal activities will be pulled into the formal sector. According to our estimates, in the next 3-4 years, this factor alone can contribute more than 1% per year. Therefore, I think that aiming for 10% growth is not beyond the possibility.
Dragon Capital Chairman Dominic Scriven

According to Mr. Dominic Scriven, the PMI index has continuously improved since the beginning of 2025, and foreign investment activities have also remained positive.

In particular, FDI capital flows have begun to appear in other sectors such as real estate, instead of industry and manufacturing as before.

However, the trend next year lies in general investment, from public investment to private investment.

"The State's message about calling for the private sector to strongly participate in infrastructure development is clear. However, I think many foreign investors still do not really understand, trust or fully feel this motivation," Mr. Dominic Scriven assessed.

On the other hand, Vietnam’s traditional driving force is exports. This year, export turnover far exceeded the forecasts of many experts, despite the tariff policy of US President Donald Trump. In fact, exports not only did not decrease but also increased strongly.

One of the important reasons is the economic diplomacy campaign that has been continuously deployed in recent times, helping Vietnam establish and concretize agreements with many international partners. This creates more room for Vietnamese enterprises as well as the FDI sector to expand production and export activities.

However, all this would not be possible without a supportive fiscal, monetary and financial policy.

"This year's credit growth rate is higher than last year. Vietnam's total credit is now over 100% of GDP, which is not high compared to some countries in the region and some large countries, but the role of Vietnam's corporate bond market is still very modest," said Mr. Dominic, emphasizing the role of the capital market. Not only the corporate bond market, the stock market by 2030 also has great potential.

However, recent years have not been favorable for the stock market. In 2022, the overall market profit was negative. In 2023, the overall market profit continued to be negative, greatly affecting the spirit of investors. It was not until 2024 that corporate profits began to recover after two bad years. This year, the market really got into "order" and became the strongest market in the region.

Although there are 1,500 listed companies on the market, at Dragon Capital, the fund has reviewed about 120 companies in detail and focused more closely on about 80 companies, accounting for nearly 80% of the capitalization value, which helped the fund's third-quarter profit increase by 21%.

This growth comes not only from sales but also from improvements in corporate profit margins between quarters. This is a positive sign for 2026, as companies have started to return to direct investment and build a foundation for growth in the following years.

"For next year, although not wanting to be too optimistic, the average total profit will be around 16-17%. Vietnam is in a fairly favorable cycle, it can be seen that the profit growth rate of companies is expanding and increasing," the Chairman of Dragon Capital affirmed and emphasized that conditions for the Vietnamese stock market, companies and capital flows are relatively favorable for 2026.

Source: https://nhandan.vn/dong-von-fdi-dich-chuyen-mo-rong-vao-cac-linh-vuc-moi-post928871.html