Vietnam

Vietnam: Growing Economy, Low Debt, Tightly Controlled Politics

Vietnam's GDP reached $476.4 billion in 2024, per the World Bank's WDI series, with GDP per capita of $4,717 and a population of 101.0 million. Government debt is projected by the IMF's World Economic Outlook at 29.8 percent of GDP in 2026, a comparatively low figure next to other states in this batch, though it is a projection rather than an observed result.

Reserves stood at $83.1 billion as of 2024, according to the World Bank's WDI series — notably, this reserves figure comes from the same WDI source as GDP, unlike several peer countries where reserves are reported by the IMF's International Financial Statistics instead. That difference in sourcing should be kept in mind when comparing Vietnam's reserves-to-GDP position against countries whose reserves figure is IMF-sourced and dated 2025.

Military Posture

SIPRI's 2025 figures put Vietnamese military expenditure at $10.5 billion, equivalent to 2.154 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series — a figure that should not be recomputed against the World Bank's 2024 GDP number cited above. Active personnel totaled 482,000 as of 2022, per COW NMC, the largest personnel figure in this set of countries, with a CINC score of 0.0111 for the same year.

Governance

V-Dem's 2025 data (v15) scores Vietnam at 0.146 on electoral democracy and 0.102 on liberal democracy, among the lowest scores in this dataset, reflecting the country's single-party political system. State capacity is scored at 0.319, also comparatively low. These are V-Dem's expert-coded index values on a 0-to-1 scale, not direct measures of service delivery.

Energy

Primary energy consumption was 5.31 exajoules in 2024, per Our World in Data. Electricity generation reached 309.99 terawatt-hours in 2025. Oil production was 98.9 terawatt-hours and gas production 60.99 terawatt-hours, both for 2024 — modest volumes that suggest Vietnam is not a major hydrocarbon producer relative to its energy consumption, though the dataset provides no net-import figures to confirm that reading.

Data Gaps

The supplied data contains no trade, inflation, or GDP growth figures for Vietnam, and no historical series for any governance or military indicator. The 2026 debt figure is a forecast, not a recorded outcome, and the personnel and CINC figures are three years old relative to the most recent economic data. Taken together, the dataset describes a low-debt, export-oriented economy with a large standing force and a tightly closed political system, but it cannot speak to recent dynamics such as growth momentum or shifts in military posture since 2022.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)