Ho Chi Minh Has No FTZ Yet. Now the City Wants to Build One Without a Fence

FTZ News: The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade is reviewing a draft resolution that is supposed to launch a free-trade zone and an integrated logistics zone under the Law on Urban Development. Vietnam’s National Assembly passed that law on August 24, 2026, and it takes effect on October 1 of this year. That means the free-trade zone is supposed to move from paper onto the ground and take on an operational course.

According to VnEconomy’s report, On the basis of the September 7 meeting of the Department of Industry and Trade and the draft of the City People’s Council, the final plan is due to go to the City People’s Council in late September 2026. The draft has five chapters and 15 articles: establishment, boundary changes, state management, incentives for investment, tax, customs, land and labor, and transitional provisions. Bui Ta Hoang Vu, director of the Department of Industry, has put three main aims on the table: alignment with national law, hearing the bottlenecks facing firms, and something that can actually work in the market. All of these aims, of course, depend on the Council’s vote, and until the draft is adopted no exemption is in fact final.

Pham Tan Dat of the Vietnam E-Commerce Association has said that if the FTZ brings in an old package under a new name, a company will only move from an EPZ into the zone when the previous incentives run out. What he wanted is a controlled pilot mechanism for models that do not yet exist in law. In a city that has had industrial zones for years, that remark is a criticism of repeating old incentives, not a rush to open. It means a new fence without a new rule is an administrative shift, not a draw for capital.

From the port side, Truong Tan Loc, chairman of Tan Cang–Cai Mep International Terminal, treated the physical boundary as a secondary issue. His proposal is an open zone that would link the entire Cai Mep–Thi Vai cluster — even wharves, ICDs and depots outside the line — through data and customs. The reason is a small and irritating figure: cargo moving from TCIT into the inner zone still requires a separate transport declaration, a seal, and a fresh declaration. That adds at least four to six hours compared with movement inside the fence. In a contest Singapore measures in hours, half a shift means missing a connecting ship. Loc also said expanding the line on the map may run into land and customs limits; for now the existing port should be managed and the line changed after an assessment. His condition is that the incentive not be locked to a single operator.

Vu has said the zone need not be one contiguous piece of land, and that expansion would be considered when performance reaches about 60 to 70 percent. Customs of Region 2 is still writing the rules for supervising warehouses and wharves.

In any event, two models now sit side by side in the draft. The FTZ is multifunctional, tied to the seaport, the international airport and a financial center. The ILZ is a technology ecosystem combining warehousing, manufacturing, processing and e-commerce beside a multimodal node. The second can stand alone or sit inside the first. On paper the split is clear. In Cai Mep, where the wharf, the proposed rail, the waterway and the industrial park already run into one another, the boundary between the two models will blur quickly. If data and procedure between the linked port and the inside of the zone are not the same, those four to six hours come back./.




Photo by Nguyệt Hà