For years, Vietnam's domestic economy has faced a persistent contradiction: administrative boundaries divided economic space, while a fragmented approach pushed businesses' operating costs to unreasonable levels, experts said.
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 solution to the problem.
Reorganising economic space around functional areas and development corridors creates opportunities to restructure supply chains, reduce logistics costs and accelerate business growth.
Shared infrastructure networks
Localities often developed seaports, airports and separate industrial parks independently. This led to duplicated projects and weakened regional competitive advantages. As a result, Vietnam's logistics costs remain at 16–18% of GDP, putting significant pressure on manufacturing margins.
At a recent conference on production-chain linkages in southern Vietnam, Ly Kim Chi, chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Food and Foodstuff Association, said poor coordination between raw-material areas in the Mekong Delta and processing, irradiation and export-port facilities in the southeastern region had created several layers of intermediary costs.
Food-processing businesses also face recurring supply disruptions unless provinces work together on the necessary logistics infrastructure.
Nguyen Hoang, chairman of the Hanoi Supporting Industries Business Association, said mechanical engineering and supporting-industry companies largely have to find customers and nearby subcontractors on their own. Without unified planning for industrial corridors, domestic suppliers will struggle to reach the production scale needed to join the supply chains of large foreign-invested enterprises.
The absence of mechanisms to coordinate economic space has forced businesses to solve local problems on their own instead of focusing resources on core competitiveness.
Resolution 27-NQ/TW sets out a multi-tiered, multi-polar structure for national development space. Urban networks, economic corridors and growth-driving regions will form its main connecting axes.
Administrative boundaries should no longer obstruct the movement of resources. For businesses, one of the resolution's most immediate practical effects could be the development of shared infrastructure. If expressways, inland container depots, multimodal warehouses and digital infrastructure are developed as connected networks, the cost of moving raw materials and finished products can be reduced substantially.
Le Duy Hiep, a representative of the Vietnam Logistics Business Association, said logistics infrastructure should not be developed on the basis that every province pursues its own projects. Logistics companies can work efficiently when infrastructure is connected in an open network and regional logistics centres consolidate and distribute goods centrally. This would improve vehicle use and reduce warehousing costs.
Workers and supply chains
Expanding market space could also make it easier for workers to move between regions. Instead of local labour shortages and competition for workers between neighbouring industrial parks, development corridors could link training institutions, worker housing and social services across provinces. This would provide a more stable supply of skilled workers for large projects.
Recommendations for businesses
To use the opportunities created by Resolution 27-NQ/TW, experts recommended that businesses reassess their positions in value chains. Companies should identify their core strengths and focus investment there, while outsourcing more supporting activities to partners along the same economic corridors to reduce costs.
Businesses should also cooperate through industry clusters and sectoral associations. Participants can make decisions jointly, invest in supply-chain infrastructure, share data and take responsibility for results.
Experts also recommended public-private partnerships to develop agricultural preservation centres and shared cold-storage facilities in raw-material production areas.
Businesses were further advised to digitise supply-chain management and use digital platforms to improve transparency around raw-material origins, track orders in real time and manage risks across interregional supply chains.
Sources: VietnamPlus / Vietnam News Agency
