🔥NHNN opens the valve for 752 trillion for Vingroup, Sun Group, Masterise: Vietnam nationalizes growth risk

NHNN allows the exclusion of new outstanding loans of 18 projects implemented by Vingroup, Sun Group and Masterise from the calculation of annual credit growth limits. Scale: Total capital mobilization needs about 752,138 billion VND (210,047 billion in 2026, 244,188 billion in 2027 and 187,018 billion in 2028), approximately ~$28.7B over 3 years.
🔴This exemption mechanism technically means NHNN is untangling 3 bottlenecks simultaneously:
- Annual credit growth
- Short-term capital ratio for medium and long-term loans
- Credit limit for a single customer/group of related customers.
-> The evidence is that NHNN raised the ceiling on the short-term capital ratio for medium and long-term loans from 30% to 40% from July 1.
With a loan scale of $28.7B, no bank - not even the Big4 - can lend without breaking the credit limit for related customer groups (the 2024 Law on Credit Institutions is gradually tightening this ceiling to 10%/15% of equity). NHNN handles this by encouraging syndicated loans, and if the limit is exceeded, it reports to NHNN to submit to the Prime Minister for decision.
-> The barrier is decided by political approval, not by financial technical standards anymore.
🔴Why is it not "reaching out to rescue businesses"?
This exemption only applies to new outstanding loans serving 18 specific projects, not to rescheduling/extending old debts. These three conglomerates are not so illiquid as to need a bailout; what they lack is the legal channel to borrow more on an unprecedented scale. The state is paving the way with policy, not a bailout as rumored.
The GDP target of 8-10% requires massive infrastructure investment, and the budget and public investment cannot be disbursed in time, so the state hires private conglomerates to build national infrastructure and pays them with credit privileges. This is a growth model driven by directed credit - a policy lending model similar to China, but running through commercial banks instead of policy banks.
🔴Why these 3 companies?
These 3 conglomerates are the three units directly assigned by the Government to projects with political deadlines that cannot be delayed:
1. Sun Group takes on the entire APEC 2027 Phu Quoc cluster: the APEC project group has a total capital need of 169,724 billion VND, including the APEC Conference Center (20,024 billion), expansion of Phu Quoc Airport (50,448 billion), the Mixed Urban Area in Bai Dat Do (81,120 billion), the Nui Ong Quan Urban Area (15,453 billion) and the urban railway line (2,679 billion). APEC is national prestige.
2. Vingroup shoulders high-speed railways (Ben Thanh - Can Gio and Hanoi - Quang Ninh) through VinSpeed.
3. Masterise (Masterise Aviation Infrastructure Joint Stock Company) is tied to Gia Binh International Airport.
-> The state accepts risks to assign these conglomerates to execute key projects.
🔴What about the impacts and risks?
- 752 trillion VND is equivalent to ~3.8% of total system outstanding loans (19.97 million billion VND as of June 26, up 7.41% from end of 2025 and 18.1% YoY). Actual credit growth will be higher than the headline figure - the credit room as a tool to control money supply does not work in this case.
-> It is very likely that this is a stepping stone for NHNN to completely abolish the room.
- Regarding liquidity: Credit increases 18.1% YoY while mobilization cannot keep up - 6-month deposit rates have appeared at 9% at many banks. Injecting an additional 210 trillion VND in loan demand in 2026 alone will further tighten the interest rate environment, directly conflicting with the goal of reducing lending rates. Moreover, raising the short-term capital ceiling for medium and long-term loans from 30% to 40% addresses symptoms but increases the maturity risk of the entire system.
- Regarding risk allocation: NHNN requires banks to take responsibility for their credit decisions, feasibility assessment, repayment ability, and capital balancing capacity
-> meaning NHNN paves the way but pushes legal responsibility to the banks. In reality, when the state has provided "political guarantee" for the project, the probability of banks refusing is nearly zero. The risk is concentrated in the group of backyard banks (typically Techcombank–Masterise/Vingroup).
🔴This policy marks three directional shifts of NHNN:
(1) The growth mandate has officially overshadowed the systemic safety mandate -> it is undeniable that it is a trade-off of risk for growth.
(2) NHNN shifts from the role of regulating aggregate volume to allocating capital flows by designation - the form of a "developmental state" as Park Chung Hee once designated Samsung, Hyundai, LG (the chaebols) to do shipbuilding, steel, electronics, accompanied by preferential interest rate credit from state-owned banks.
(3) The model of "national private conglomerates" (in the spirit of Resolution 68 on private economy) is institutionalized through financial privileges, meaning too-big-to-fail is written into documents. The chaebol model is increasingly clear as private risks are gradually nationalized first, profits must wait for time to tell.