Foreign-invested firms in Vietnam rise nearly 34% in 5 years, capital up 83%

The number of foreign-invested enterprises operating in Vietnam rose nearly 34% over the past five years, while their capital expanded by more than 83%, the fastest growth among all economic sectors, according to preliminary results of the country's 2026 Economic Census released on Monday.

"The continued expansion of foreign-invested enterprises reaffirms Vietnam's attractiveness as an investment destination while reflecting the ongoing relocation of global supply chains and the expansion of business activities by foreign investors," said Nguyen Thanh Duong, deputy head of the National Statistics Office (NSO) and deputy head of the standing committee for the census.

The results were consistent with Vietnam's foreign investment performance in 2025, when both registered and disbursed FDI were at healthy levels, he added.

The country recorded $27.62 billion in implemented FDI capital for 2025, up 9% year-on-year and marking the highest level in five years. The FDI disbursements in 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 were $25.35 billion, $23.18 billion, $22.4 billion, and $19.74 billion, respectively.

Registered FDI capital reached $38.42 billion in 2025, up 0.5% from a year earlier. At the GSO's calculations, registered capital comprises capital for newly-registered projects, additional capital for existing projects, and capital for stake acquisitions.

By contrast, the number of operating state-owned enterprises stood at 1,770, up 0.3% from 2024 but down 9.8% from 2020. Duong said the decline was in line with the government's policy of restructuring state-owned enterprises to focus resources on strategic and essential sectors.

The NSO, under the Ministry of Finance, said the nationwide census, conducted every five years, showed that Vietnam had nearly 876,200 enterprises and cooperatives, and almost 5.3 million household businesses.

Despite a challenging business environment, the number of operating enterprises continued to increase, reflecting the resilience and adaptability of Vietnamese businesses, NSO reported.

As of December 31, 2025, information had been collected from 1,220,678 enterprises nationwide, of which 859,048 were operating and reporting business activity. The number of active enterprises increased 2.4% from 2024 and 25.5% from 2020.

The census also showed that enterprises employed an average of 20.5 workers in 2025, suggesting that most Vietnamese businesses remained small and medium-sized.

State-owned enterprises had the largest average workforce, employing 553.7 workers per company, followed by foreign-invested firms with 206.4 workers. Domestic private enterprises employed an average of 12.6 workers.

The total capital of active enterprises reached VND82,800 trillion ($3.15 trillion), up 14.5% from 2024 and 69.9% from 2020.

Domestic private enterprises accounted for the largest share, with VND49,000 trillion ($1.87 trillion) in capital, up 69.4% over the five-year period.

Foreign-invested enterprises recorded VND17,100 trillion ($651.39 billion) in capital, an increase of 16.8% from 2024 and 83.1% from 2020, the fastest growth among all economic sectors between 2020 and 2025.

The figure for state-owned enterprises was VND16,700 trillion ($636.15 billion) in capital, up 15.7% from the previous year and 59.6% from 2020.