Hanoi (VNA) – For years, Vietnam’s domestic economy has faced a persistent paradox, with a mindset of territorial fragmentation along administrative boundaries dividing economic space and pushed businesses’ operating costs to unreasonable levels, according to experts.
The Politburo’s Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW, dated August 28, 2026, on regional development and the organisation of national development space in the new period is seen as a fundamental solution to this problem.
By reorganising economic space around functional areas and development corridors, the resolution opens up opportunities to restructure supply chains, ease logistics costs and create fresh momentum for substantive breakthroughs across the business community.
The reality showed that the tendency of localities to independently develop seaports, airports and isolated industrial parks has led to duplication and undermined one another’s competitive advantages. As a result, Vietnam’s logistics costs remain high at 16-18% of GDP, significantly squeezing profit margins in the manufacturing sector.
At a recent conference on promoting production chain linkages in southern Vietnam, Ly Kim Chi, Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Food and Foodstuff Association (FFA), pointed out that inadequate coordination between raw material areas in the Mekong Delta and processing, irradiation and export port facilities in the southeastern region had subjected agricultural products to multiple layers of intermediary costs.
Food processing businesses also faced constant concerns over supply disruptions unless localities work together to address the need for shared logistics infrastructure.
Nguyen Hoang, Chairman of the Hanoi Supporting Industries Business Association (HANSIBA), said that mechanical engineering and supporting industry businesses largely has to fend for themselves when seeking customers and nearby subcontracting partners. Without unified planning for industrial corridors, domestic suppliers will struggle to achieve the production scale needed to join the supply chains of major foreign-invested enterprises.
Clearly, the absence of mechanisms to coordinate economic space has forced businesses to tackle localised problems on their own, rather than concentrate resources on strengthening their core competitiveness.
Resolution 27-NQ/TW marks a fundamental shift in thinking by organising national development space into a multi-tiered, multi-polar structure, with urban networks, economic corridors and growth-driving regions serving as the main connecting axes.
Administrative boundaries will no longer act as barriers to the flow of resources. For businesses, one of the resolution’s most immediate practical benefits lies in promoting shared infrastructure. When expressways, inland container depots, multimodal warehouses and digital infrastructure are developed as interconnected networks, the costs of transporting raw materials and finished products can be significantly reduced.
Le Duy Hiep, a representative of the Vietnam Logistics Business Association (VLA), said logistics infrastructure should not be developed as a trend in which every province pursues its own projects. Logistics businesses can operate efficiently only when infrastructure is connected into an open network, with regional logistics centres consolidating and distributing goods centrally, thereby improving vehicle utilisation and reducing warehousing costs.
Beyond physical infrastructure, the expansion of market space can also facilitate labour mobility. Instead of localised labour shortages and competition for workers between neighbouring industrial parks, development corridors can link training institutions, worker housing and social welfare services across provincial boundaries, creating a stable supply of skilled workers for large-scale projects.
To capitalise on opportunities created by Resolution 27-NQ/TW, experts recommended that businesses reassess their positions in value chains. They should clearly identify their core strengths and concentrate investment on them, while being more willing to form partnerships or outsource supporting activities to businesses operating along the same economic corridors to optimise costs.
They should also cooperate through industry clusters and sectoral associations, whereby participants jointly make decisions, invest in supply chain infrastructure, share data and assume responsibility.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) to develop agricultural preservation centres and shared cold-storage facilities in raw material production areas should also be encouraged, experts said.
They also advised businesses to digitise supply chain management, and adopt digital platforms to improve transparency in raw material origins, track orders in real time and manage risks across interregional supply chains./.
