On June 12, 2025, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) released a draft amendment to Decree 24/2012/ND-CP on gold trading management, inviting public feedback The most notable proposal in the draft is to end the State’s monopoly on gold bar production and the import/export of raw gold for minting. Specifically, the SBV proposes a licensing mechanism that would allow certain qualified enterprises and banks to produce gold bars and import raw gold for that purpose. The central bank emphasized that licenses and annual import/export quotas would be granted based on “monetary policy objectives and supply-demand conditions” in each period. This move aligns with a directive issued earlier by Party General Secretary To Lam. During a working session with the Strategy and Policy Commission of the Party Central Committee on May 28, 2025, he called for the elimination of the State monopoly over gold bar production. But how should this policy shift be interpreted? “Goldization” and Decree 24 To understand the context behind this amendment, we need to look back to the period before Decree 24 was issued. Prior to its enactment in 2012, gold bar trading in Vietnam was carried out by some 12,000 businesses and small retail outlets. In […]