The Ho Chi Minh City financial centre occupies roughly 898 hectares of the most valuable land in Vietnam and carries the broadest mandate in the country’s new financial architecture. Under Decree 323/2025/ND-CP it is one half of a single unified entity, but its brief is distinct: build a comprehensive, diverse financial ecosystem rather than a niche one. This guide covers the footprint, the mandate and what it means for institutions choosing a base.
The Ho Chi Minh City financial centre footprint
The Ho Chi Minh City financial centre spans Sai Gon ward, Ben Thanh ward and the Thu Thiem New Urban Area in An Khanh ward. The boundary runs Vo Van Kiet – Pho Duc Chinh – Nguyen Cong Tru – Nam Ky Khoi Nghia – Le Duan – Ton Duc Thang – Nguyen Huu Canh – the Nhieu Loc Thi Nghe canal – the Saigon River – the Lan Anh villa area – Tran Bach Dang – Tran Nao – the northern and north-eastern edge of Thu Thiem – Street No. 7 – Ca Tre canal – the Saigon River – back to Vo Van Kiet.
Two things follow. First, the centre absorbs the existing central business district rather than replacing it, so institutions already in District 1 towers may find themselves inside the perimeter. Second, Thu Thiem – long-planned, long-delayed – finally has an anchor use case, and the land economics there change accordingly.
The Ho Chi Minh City financial centre mandate
Decree 323/2025 directs the Ho Chi Minh City financial centre to develop a comprehensive and diverse financial ecosystem, delivering both traditional and specialised services and exploiting the reinforcing effects between them: capital raising, investment, payments, issuance and trading of financial products, asset management, technology-applied financial services and green finance.
The phrase that matters is the synergy language. The policy intent is a full-stack centre where a fund can raise capital, custody assets, hedge exposure and settle payments inside one regulatory perimeter – the structural advantage Singapore and Hong Kong built over decades.
Functional zones in the Ho Chi Minh City financial centre
The decree specifies zones for financial trading, banking services, securities and commodities exchanges, offices, and an arbitration and court centre, with further zones at the discretion of the executive body. The inclusion of a dedicated dispute resolution district is a signal aimed squarely at foreign institutions, and our dispute resolution guide examines it.
Who should base in Ho Chi Minh City rather than Da Nang
The split is deliberate. Institutions whose business depends on scale, liquidity and proximity to Vietnamese corporate issuers belong in the south: investment banks, fund managers, custodians, insurers, private equity and the professional firms serving them. Businesses built on experimentation – digital assets, novel payment rails, specialised exchanges – fit the Da Nang financial centre mandate better. Because the rulebook is identical at both sites, this is a commercial choice, not a regulatory one, as our overview of the international financial centre explains.
Ho Chi Minh City financial centre timeline and next steps
The 2025-2026 phase requires the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee to form and commence operations, resource the centre’s institutions, complete priority infrastructure, and seed the ecosystem of exchanges, fintech platforms and international-standard advisory services. Institutions planning entry should be doing three things now: confirming whether their intended activity sits on the priority list, modelling the tax and foreign exchange treatment covered in our tax incentives guide, and securing space before the Thu Thiem supply is committed.
Ho Chi Minh City financial centre FAQs
Does an existing District 1 office qualify automatically?
Being inside the boundary is necessary but not sufficient – membership depends on licensing under the centre’s criteria, not on address alone. Our membership guide sets out the route.
How does it compare with regional centres?
On cost and talent supply Vietnam competes strongly; on depth of capital markets it is starting behind. The realistic near-term proposition is a low-cost, high-growth base serving Vietnamese and regional flows rather than a direct substitute for Singapore. Official texts are published via the Ministry of Finance.
The talent and cost equation
Occupancy inside the perimeter will price at a premium to the rest of the city and at a deep discount to Singapore, Hong Kong or Tokyo. That gap is the whole commercial case for a regional booking or servicing operation. Vietnam produces a large annual cohort of finance, accounting and engineering graduates, and salary levels for mid-tier analysts and operations staff remain a fraction of North Asian benchmarks. What is genuinely scarce is senior talent with international product experience – derivatives structuring, fund administration at scale, cross-border regulatory work – and that is precisely the gap the centre’s employment mechanisms are designed to close by making it straightforward to bring in experienced expatriates alongside local hires.
Firms planning a Ho Chi Minh City financial centre presence should therefore model two workforces: a local base built for scale and cost, and a small senior layer imported to transfer capability. Groups that budget only for the first find their build-out stalls at the point where product complexity rises; groups that budget only for the second never achieve the cost advantage that justified the move.
The practical sequence that works is to secure premises and licence first, hire the senior layer second, and scale the local team against actual mandate flow rather than projected headcount. It is slower on paper and materially faster in practice.
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice for any specific case. Regulations may change – please consult a qualified professional before acting. Should further analysis be required, please contact one of our lawyers below.
