This handout photo taken on Tuesday, January 20, 2026 and released by the 14th National Congress via the Vietnam News Agency shows Vietnam's Communist Party General Secretary To Lam addressing the opening session of the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi. -- Photo by Handout / Vietnam News Agency (VNA) / AFP
HANOI (Bloomberg): Vietnam’s top leader said the country must pursue a "new model” to reach its 10% growth goal, highlighting the role of technology, private industries and rooting out corruption.
Speaking at the opening of the party’s National Congress on Tuesday, General Secretary To Lam laid out his vision for maintaining breakneck growth and autonomy amid an increasingly fraught competition between its top political and economic partners, the US and China.
"We must be determined to renew our thinking, improve institutions, and enhance national governance capacity,” Lam said in his policy speech, ranging across industries from green energy to infrastructure and national defense. "We must act forcefully, resolutely.”
"Our greatest weakness lies in the fact that many sound policies have not been implemented effectively,” he said.
Lam addressed delegates at a party congress where he appears on course to secure a full five-year term as General Secretary and may also be put forward for the presidency. Several days of secret ballots under tight security will culminate in the election of a new Politburo and party chief later this week.
"To Lam is selling urgency - with action, implementation and institutional reform,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. While his predecessor made party discipline the focus of his 2021 congress speech, "the rhetorical shift is from policing the system to rewiring it,” Giang said.
The political gathering comes at a crucial time for Vietnam, which is negotiating a tariff deal with the US while balancing relations with its biggest trade partner, Beijing. The nation remains a key beneficiary of supply chain shifts away from China, while a surge in shipments to the US has seen its trade surplus swell and draw the ire of President Donald Trump.
It also offers Lam a chance to solidify the changes he’s pursued in his 18 months as party chief, including some of the most significant in four decades, such as slashing the size of the bureaucracy, shrinking the number of provinces by half and cutting a whole tier of local government.
Lam’s core reforms "are already in implementation,” said Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. "The congress therefore functions less as a policy inflection point and more as a formal consolidation of measures already shaping the macro trajectory.”
Nominations for other key roles will also be settled and delegates will approve a new economic blueprint as Vietnam targets annual growth of at least 10% on average over the next five years. The export-dependent economy grew 8.02% last year, despite the Trump administration’s 20% tariff.
Ahead of the conclave, the government posted draft documents online that preview what could be in the five-year plan.
The party is seeking to boost "the development of the private sector as one of the most important growth engines” and focus on developing "large, strong Vietnamese private conglomerates,” a message Lam reiterated Tuesday. The introduction last year of so-called Resolution 68 elevated the private sector from an "important driving force.”
State-run companies, touted as a key pillar of the economy in the recently passed Resolution 79, will play a leading role in "guiding and orienting strategic direction,” the documents say, while also highlighting the need to innovate.
Lam on Tuesday said that "the state economy plays the leading role in maintaining macroeconomic stability, safeguarding major balances, setting strategic directions, and providing guidance.”
As Vietnam seeks to move up the value chain and target high-income status by 2045, the draft also focuses on the need to develop and own emerging industries, including semiconductors, automation and robotics.
Age Exemptions
Just under 1,600 delegates will elect about 200 members to the Central Committee, which in turn will pick the Politburo and from that the general secretary. Nominations will then be submitted for the positions of president, prime minister and National Assembly chair.
Parliament will vote on the candidates when it convenes in April, but that step will mostly be procedural.
There’s also the question of age. Vietnam sets its official retirement ceiling at 65, although exemptions are often granted. Former Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong was 80 when he died, having been in the post for 13 years.
Voting at the Congress will take place behind closed doors, with mobile data and Wi-Fi signals blocked. Press covering the event were issued with stringent guidelines prohibiting them from carrying mobile phones and recording devices inside the main hall. Thousands of police and military personnel have been deployed in the capital to ensure security.
--With assistance from Nguyen Kieu Giang and Cao Ban. -- ©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
