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economy growth annually and requiring 40% of SMEs to adopt AI-enabled digital
transformation, provides a replicable provincial model (Vietnam.vn, 2026).
5.6. Data sovereignty and the CBDC-AI nexus: mobilizing financial data for
productivity intelligence
The convergence of the State Bank of Vietnam's Central Bank Digital Currency
(CBDC) pilot, tested in Da Nang's 2026 City Data Exchange Platform, with AI-powered
financial analytics creates an opportunity to build a real-time economic intelligence
system linking payment flows, tax filings, supply chain data, and employment registries
into a unified, AI-analyzable dataset enabling dynamic policy calibration (Vietnam.vn,
2026). The AI Law's prioritization of national sectoral datasets, combined with the CBDC's
financial data dimension, lays the foundation for Vietnam's first national AI productivity
dashboard, enabling real-time, evidence-based policymaking and allowing continuous
monitoring of AI's contribution to TFP across sectors.
5.7. Green-digital twin transformation: AI as an enabler of sustainable
productivity
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has identified dual transformation, digital (DX)
combined with green (GX), as Vietnam's defining industrial challenge for 2026 (Vietnam
News, 2025d). This is not a trade-off: AI-enabled energy optimization, smart grid
management, precision agriculture, and logistics decarbonization generate both
productivity gains and emissions reductions simultaneously, expanding TFP while building
ESG competitiveness. Vietnam's four strategic resolutions, 57-NQ/TW (science and
technology), 59-NQ/TW (international integration), 66-NQ/TW (legal reform), and 68-
NQ/TW (private sector development), collectively create the enabling ecosystem (VIR,
2025). Future policy should require AI investment projects receiving NATIF or National AI
Fund support to report green co-benefits, energy savings, emissions reductions, resource
efficiency, creating an evidence base linking AI-TFP investments to Vietnam's Paris
Agreement commitments.
5.8. Building Vietnam's position in the global AI governance architecture
As the first country in Southeast Asia with a comprehensive standalone AI Law
(effective March 1, 2026), Vietnam holds a unique first-mover advantage in regulatory
diplomacy at a critical juncture when most economies, including major ones, are still
debating their AI governance approaches and developing countries remain largely absent
from standard-setting bodies (Allen & Gledhill, 2026; Vietcetera, 2026). This advantage
should be actively converted into institutional influence: (a) leading ASEAN AI governance
working groups to position Vietnam's risk-based three-tier model as the regional standard;
(b) establishing bilateral AI governance dialogues with the EU, South Korea, and Japan; (c)
placing Vietnamese AI experts in OECD, UNESCO, and ITU advisory bodies; and (d)
developing AI regulatory sandboxes under ASEAN's Digital Economy Framework Agreement
(DEFA) using Vietnam's domestic infrastructure as the test bed. Countries that set the rules
for AI early shape the next global technology economy (Vietcetera, 2026), Vietnam's
legislative head start must be converted into lasting institutional and economic influence.
6. Conclusions
Vietnam stands at a pivotal juncture in its AI development trajectory. The country
has achieved remarkable adoption metrics, 81% daily AI user interaction rates, USD 39
billion digital economy valuation, and 78% growth in AI-integrated application revenues,
yet has not translated this adoption into sustained, economy-wide productivity gains
commensurate with its high-income ambitions. This Vietnam AI productivity gap is

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