Vietnam is at a crossroads. Fragmentation of production across increasingly complex global value chains (GVCs) will continue to create both opportunities and challenges. The domestic policies that Vietnam enacts in the near future will determine whether it will be pushed further toward its current specialization of low value-added assembly functions—or whether it will manage to leverage the current wave of growth to diversify and capture higher value-added functions in GVCs. This upper development path will require Vietnam to address a large and complex supply-side agenda by sequencing carefully the next wave of reforms.

So we ask the question: Which economic policies and investment priorities will allow Vietnam to situate itself firmly on the path toward higher income status, as the economy matures toward 2035? And can further integration in networks of global production—GVCs—support such a goal?