For decades, gross domestic product (GDP) growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have served as key benchmarks for economic governance in Vietnam. However, if we peel back these surface indicators and examine income balances and economic spillover effects more closely, a concerning picture emerges: growth is increasingly being sustained by rising debt and a gradual decline in domestic value added. The economy’s debt: the iceberg beneath public debt When discussing national financial health, public attention often focuses solely on public debt. This is a misjudgment. Public debt is merely the visible tip, while the debt of the entire economy — including that of state-owned enterprises, the domestic private sector, and the FDI sector — is what truly determines macroeconomic stability. The period from 2011 to 2024 has witnessed a worrying “decoupling”: the growth rate of total liabilities across the economy at current prices (averaging around 14–15% per year) has consistently outpaced the growth rate of total value added (just over 10%). This means that increasingly large financial leverage is required to sustain the same level of value growth. In particular, the nonstate sector is falling into a cycle of “borrowing to survive,” with debt rising at over 16% annually […]