With guidance to establish the IFC, including its institutional framework, policy orientation, and implementation roadmap now in effect, and with the full suite of implementing decrees issued, the government has completed the core legislative and policy framework required to support IFC’s development.

Richard D. McClellan Economic advisor, Vietnam’s international financial centre

This achievement is rightly being recognised as a major milestone. That said, the completion of the legal framework represents only the initial catalyst of a long journey ahead. The establishment of the IFC should be understood as the point at which the legal and policy foundations are now in place.

Vietnam has moved decisively from concept to commitment. The enabling framework for an IFC – across taxation, finance, banking, dispute resolution, labour, land, and governance – has now been established. However, significant work remains to move from founding legal documents to an internationally viable financial hub.

The immediate task ahead is translating this framework into a functioning set of institutions. This involves standing up executive and supervisory bodies, issuing operating regulations, staffing key functions, establishing administrative systems, and beginning to process real cases. These steps take time, even under the best circumstances, and are inherently iterative.

A reasonable expectation is that the IFC should reach an initial level of operational functionality over the coming months, meaning that core administrative processes are in place, early applications can be handled, and the institution begins to operate as a practical platform rather than a purely legal construct. This initial phase will focus on learning, calibration, and controlled execution.

Looking more broadly, 2026 should be viewed as a year of institution-building. International experience shows that successful IFCs invest heavily in their early years in getting the fundamentals right: governance, supervision, procedures, talent, and coordination across agencies. Depth, efficiency, and seamless execution are outcomes of this process, not starting conditions.

Legalities to early operations for Vietnam’s IFC, photo Le Toan

For Vietnam’s IFC, this phase will necessarily require finalising operating regulations under the approved decrees, building capable professional teams within the executive agencies, establishing one-stop administrative and digital systems, working through early licensing and supervisory cases, and strengthening coordination between executive, supervisory, and dispute-resolution functions.

Progress during this period may not be immediately visible in headline figures, but it will be decisive in shaping long-term credibility and effectiveness.

Full maturity may take seven years or more. Even the most successful IFCs require sufficient time to reach a point where processes are seamless, rules are fully internalised by market participants, and operations function with speed and predictability. Vietnam’s IFC should be expected to follow a similar trajectory.

This creates an important opportunity for early participants. The initial phase of the IFC will benefit from institutions and partners that engage in good faith, bring international experience, and are prepared to work constructively with authorities as the platform takes shape. These early participants will not only be users of the IFC, but contributors to its development, helping to refine processes, set norms, and establish credibility.

Success in the first year should therefore be measured in practical, foundational terms: core institutions are operational, the legal framework is being applied in real cases, and early participants can engage productively with the system. If these conditions are met, confidence will build that the IFC can scale over time.

If this occurs, Vietnam’s IFC will have accomplished its most important objective in this phase: moving decisively from framework to function and laying the groundwork for sustained growth and sophistication in the years ahead.