Vietnam advances on US’s biggest foreign creditors list

Vietnam rose to the 31st position on the list of “major foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities” as of January 2022, which was published on March 15.

Owning $42.3 billion in U.S. government bonds, Vietnam jumped one more level to 31 on the list since its last move in June 2021, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Over five years, the Vietnamese government’s U.S.Treasury securities holdings has increased by more than three times, from $13.3 billion in 2017.

Based on its position as the primary payment currency and a stable political and economic system, the U.S. dollar has long been the world’s reserve currency. Therefore, the Vietnamese government’s holdings demonstrate the southeast Asia country’s strength rather than the U.S.’s debt burden, according to analysts.

The debt does not reflect the entire situation of Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves. It rather indicates the volume of U.S. government bonds held by Vietnam, which are currently kept in custody at U.S. banks.

The money accounts for nearly 38.5% of Vietnam’s total foreign exchange reserve as the State Bank of Vietnam recently said the reserve was $109.9 billion last year.

Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserve expanded rapidly in recent years and hit a record of $109.9 billion in 2021, an almost ten-fold increase over 2010 ($12.4 billion), and nearly four times higher than 2015 ($28.2 billion). The figure is likely to rise in the next years in line with the country’s economic development, the central bank stated.

Vietnam’s imports reached $332.23 billion last year. That means the $110 billion in reserve is equivalent to about 17 weeks of imports, significantly higher than the previous years' level of 9-12 weeks. According to the IMF, the minimum foreign exchange reserve of a country should be 8-12 weeks of imports, with 16-24 a high figure.

According to the U.S. Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury, foreign countries held a total of $7.66 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities as of January 2022. Of this, Japan and mainland China held the greatest portions, with $1.3 trillion and $1.06 trillion respectively.

Data of Statista, a New York-based market research and analysis firm, shows that the U.S. had a total public national debt of $28.43 trillion in 2021, an amount that has been rising gradually since 2008.