Yet the most significant aspect of the resolution is not the investment figure itself. Rather, it is the way Vietnam is redefining the objectives of its FDI strategy.

For the first time in nearly four decades of economic opening, Vietnam has established targets not only for foreign-invested enterprises but also for domestic companies. The resolution aims to have around 10,000 Vietnamese businesses integrated into FDI supply chains, including 500 to 1,000 Tier-1 suppliers, while raising localization rates in key industries to between 45% and 50%.

If FDI success was once measured by the number of licensed projects or the volume of disbursed capital, Resolution 10 introduces a new benchmark: how many Vietnamese companies grow because of foreign investment.

Asking more from FDI

After nearly four decades of attracting foreign investment, Vietnam has become one of the region's most successful FDI destinations. In 2025, realized FDI reached its highest level in five years, with the foreign-invested sector contributing roughly 20% of GDP and more than 70% of the country's export turnover.

But as the capital question has largely been addressed, a more important one has emerged: What does Vietnam gain beyond investment capital?

A close reading of Resolution 10 reveals a strategic shift from attracting capital to attracting technology, knowledge, management expertise and deeper participation in the higher value-added segments of global value chains.

High-quality institutions attract high-quality FDI

Lawyer Tran Thi Thanh Hao, who has worked with foreign investors for more than 20 years, believes that investors are not primarily seeking a few percentage points of tax incentives. What they value most is the ability to predict the business environment years into the future.

A multinational corporation may be willing to accept slightly higher operating costs, but it is unlikely to accept an environment where it cannot anticipate what conditions will look like in five or ten years.

That is why Resolution 10 devotes considerable attention to improving investment transparency, protecting property rights and enhancing policy predictability.

Vietnamese businesses become the new measure of success

According to Dr. Phan Huu Thang, former Director General of the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, now the Ministry of Finance, Vietnam is entering a new phase of FDI development - moving from expansion in scale to greater depth and quality.

"In the past, we counted how many foreign companies came to Vietnam. Resolution 10 begins focusing on a different number: how many Vietnamese companies mature because of their presence," he said.

At first glance, the target of integrating around 10,000 Vietnamese businesses into FDI supply chains may be the most difficult objective in the entire resolution. Achieving it will require narrowing a gap that has existed for years between foreign-invested enterprises and domestic firms.

Ultimately, the purpose of attracting foreign investment is not simply to build more foreign-owned factories. It is to enable Vietnamese companies to learn new technologies, improve management capabilities and participate in the most value-generating stages of global production networks.

Without that transformation, the achievements of the FDI sector in terms of investment and exports will inevitably face limits.

This concern is far from theoretical. Nearly four decades after opening its economy, Vietnam still operates with two relatively separate economic sectors within the same system.

The FDI sector accounts for the majority of exports, consistently generates trade surpluses and demonstrates significantly higher labor productivity. Meanwhile, many domestic enterprises remain concentrated in lower-value segments of production chains.

Samsung provides a telling example. After more than 15 years in Vietnam, the company has become the country's largest exporter. Yet the number of Vietnamese businesses participating in technology-intensive and high-value-added stages of its supply chain remains relatively modest compared with the scale of its operations.

In other words, many multinational corporations continue to import core components, use Vietnam as a manufacturing base and export finished products to global markets. Domestic companies still face significant barriers to entering areas such as design, core technologies and advanced component production.

Resolution 10 seeks to address a longstanding paradox. Vietnam has been among the most successful FDI destinations in Asia, yet the transfer of technology, management expertise and competitiveness from the foreign-invested sector to domestic businesses has fallen short of expectations.

Competing through people

The resolution targets a workforce training rate of around 80% while significantly increasing the proportion of Vietnamese professionals holding technical, managerial, research and design positions in high-quality FDI projects.

For many years, Vietnam's advantages lay in its abundant labor supply and competitive costs. However, the semiconductor, artificial intelligence and research-and-development centers that Vietnam now seeks to attract require engineers, researchers and professionals capable of creating new knowledge.

Ultimately, the country's ability to attract high-tech investment will depend more on the quality of its human capital than on tax incentives or industrial park acreage.

After nearly 40 years of economic opening, Vietnam has learned how to attract multinational corporations. It has also demonstrated that it can become one of the region's leading destinations for foreign investment.

The challenge ahead, however, is no longer about attracting additional billions of dollars in capital. It is about how much technology, knowledge and competitive capability Vietnam can retain from those investments.

The defining challenge of the next two decades will not be how to persuade multinational corporations to come to Vietnam, but how to ensure Vietnamese enterprises are strong enough to grow alongside them.

Lan Anh