The Red River aspiration in Hanoi

On December 19, two mega projects, the Olympic Sports Urban Area south of Hanoi and the Red River landscape boulevard, were officially launched in the presence of Party and State leaders, alongside 234 projects nationwide with a total value exceeding VND3.4 quadrillion.

The event evoked a sense of a new institutional transition, when what had previously remained in documents started to take shape through tangible works in daily life.

Just days earlier, on December 13, at a thematic conference of the Hanoi Party Committee, all members unanimously voted to approve the investment policy resolution for these two projects.

Hanoi Party Secretary Nguyen Duy Ngoc said the projects are of special importance, not only for the capital city, but also for the Red River Delta and the country as a whole, aiming to create a “Red River miracle” and support GRDP growth of 11 percent or higher starting in 2026 and throughout the 2026–2030 term.

Behind the unanimous vote was not only political determination, but also the emergence of a new institutional framework.

Under the old design, a mega-scale project implemented under a PPP model would typically require approval at very high levels, with lengthy procedures and significant time risks.

However, with Resolution 258, the National Assembly adopted a different approach: creating an overarching legal framework that allows Hanoi to preliminarily approve investment policies at the city level, split projects into independent subcomponents, and commence eligible items while detailed procedures continue to be completed in parallel.

In other words, instead of “seeking permission step by step,” Hanoi has been granted flexible space to organize investment, provided that it strictly complies with the principles set by the National Assembly.

The Red River landscape boulevard axis, a rare infrastructure–urban project in both scale and complexity, can thus be reviewed and approved for investment policy by the City Party Executive Committee and the Hanoi People’s Council at the city level, based on the special mechanism under Resolution 258.

When viewed from an institutional perspective, the project is not just a planning problem or mega-investment capital, but a "test case" on how Vietnam is step-by-step moving towards a development model based on controlled decentralization, flexible procedures, and design mechanisms suitable for the scale of each project, instead of applying the same process to all types of works.

That meaning is even more prominent when placed in the context that Hanoi has had hundreds of suspended projects since its administrative boundary expansion in 2008, and the whole country currently has up to 2,887 investment projects that are suspended or facing obstacles, with total capital of more than $235 billion and an area of 347,000 ha.

The Thu Thiem story in HCMC

Thu Thiem in HCMC shows that institutional reform is being implemented at a high level. On December 21, 2025, at the Government Office, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chaired a conference announcing the establishment of the International Financial Center (IFC) in Vietnam.

In his opening remarks, he emphasized that this is not merely a high-end service project, but first and foremost an institutional breakthrough aimed at unlocking resources, enhancing national competitiveness, and ushering the economy into a new development phase.

The IFC story began with National Assembly Resolution 222, the first document to recognize the International Financial Center as a unified legal entity, with its “heart” located in HCMC and the ability to operate under international standards, from arbitration mechanisms and transaction language to allowing reference to foreign law in certain financial and investment transactions.

Government Decree 323 then translated this conceptual framework into a concrete operating architecture: an Executive Council, an independent supervision mechanism, and a service ecosystem spanning from investment banking, asset management, and fintech to green finance.

The Prime Minister’s Decision 2755 on establishing the Executive Council, chaired by the Standing Deputy Prime Minister, is the final piece that moves the IFC into the implementation state.

The National Assembly passed the Law on Specialized Courts at the IFC, creating a dedicated jurisdictional foundation for international financial disputes, along with a preferential corporate income tax rate of 10 percent for 30 years for priority fields.

These are institutional tools designed according to global competition logic, in which the rules of the game and jurisdictional mechanisms are prioritized, instead of considering incentives or infrastructure as central factors.

to be continued...

Tu Giang