🥖 Doubling down on Vietnam

Good evening from Ho Chi Minh City,

Welcome back to Bánh Mì Brief - your crispy weekly layer of Vietnam business news.

This week, foreign capital is rushing back into Vietnamese real estate, OrthoLite is doubling down on “Made in Vietnam” with a new insole factory, and Hanoi is quietly rewriting the rulebook for everything from short selling to gold taxes and high‑tech subsidies.

Enjoy the read!

After two painful years on the developer detox plan, Vietnam’s property market is looking hot again. In Q1 2025, real estate pulled in over 2.39 billion USD of registered FDI, accounting for about 21.8% of total inflows and jumping 44.1% year-on-year. By mid‑2025, that figure had swelled to around 5.1 billion USD, roughly double the same period last year and about 24% of total registered FDI, making property the second‑largest magnet after manufacturing. It’s a clear sign that international capital is tiptoeing back into Vietnamese bricks, mortar and warehouses.

This new wave is powered less by speculative condos and more by factories, logistics hubs, and “China+1” supply‑chain moves. Manufacturing FDI hit nearly 12 billion USD in H1 2025, the highest since 2009. Ready‑built factory supply has reached about 11 million square metres nationwide with occupancy above 85%.

Policy tailwinds are helping turn this capital wave into a new property cycle rather than a fleeting tide. Amendments to the Land Law and Housing Law, along with streamlined investment procedures and new rules on industrial land leasing, are improving transparency and making it easier to get projects from PowerPoint to groundbreaking.

US footwear component maker OrthoLite, the name quietly sitting under the feet of sneaker fans everywhere, is stepping harder into Vietnam. The company, which supplies insoles to more than 550 brands including Adidas, ASICS, New Balance, and Lacoste, has opened a new manufacturing facility in northern Ninh Binh Province, branded OrthoLite North Vietnam. This is its second factory in the country after its long‑running plant in Binh Duong, turning Vietnam into a true production hub rather than just a satellite.

The Ninh Binh site is designed around a “local‑for‑local” and vertical integration model: more processes in‑house, closer to where global brands actually assemble their shoes. OrthoLite says the plant will boost capacity, shorten lead times, and make its supply chain more resilient, while keeping global quality standards across its different foam formulations.

Vietnam wants to climb the tech ladder and the income ladder at the same time, but its latest move to tidy up high‑tech subsidies is making some of its closest partners nervous. South Korea is one of Vietnam’s biggest backers, with cumulative investment around 92 billion USD by end‑2024, roughly one‑fifth of Vietnam’s GDP. Samsung alone accounts for more than a tenth of Vietnam’s exports while producing about 60% of its global phones in the country. That depth of exposure explains why Korean investors are sounding the alarm over proposed changes to Vietnam’s High‑Tech Law and incentive regime.

According to a draft under discussion, Vietnam plans to scrap provisions that previously granted some high‑tech companies the “highest incentives” on taxes, duties, and land, and move towards a more standardised framework in the Global Minimum Tax era. The revised law would replace the current high‑tech enterprise certification regime with a self‑assessment model, leaving room for post‑audit interpretations that may alter the benefits investors thought they had locked in.

With Vietnam already implementing a 15% global minimum tax on large multinationals, Korean businesses worry the combined effect could mean higher effective tax bills, less certainty around land and customs incentives, and weaker competitiveness versus rival locations. Just as new US tariffs and trade tensions are putting pressure on export‑led electronics manufacturing.

Anything missed, feedback to share, or a topic to cover next week? Just hit reply to this email.

Enjoyed the read? Share it with friends, colleagues, and anyone curious about Vietnam’s growth path.

See you next week! 🥖