On the morning of July 5, the General Statistics Office (under the Ministry of Finance) held a press conference to announce the country’s socio-economic statistics for the second quarter and the first half of 2025.

Nguyen Thi Huong, Director General of the General Statistics Office, described the second-quarter and first-half performance as highly positive.

Vietnam's GDP in the second quarter grew by an estimated 7.96% year-on-year, the second-highest Q2 growth recorded between 2020 and 2025, only behind the 8.56% growth of Q2 2022.

The GDP for the first six months of 2025 grew 7.52% compared to the same period last year. According to Huong, this is the highest growth rate for the first half of the year in the 2011-2025 period.

In terms of sector contributions: the industry and construction sector grew by 8.33%, contributing 42.20% to the overall increase; agriculture, forestry, and fisheries grew by 3.84%, contributing 5.59%; and services grew by 8.14%, contributing 52.21%.

Within the industry and construction sector, the industrial sub-sector achieved strong growth. The value added by the entire industrial sector in the first half of 2025 increased by 8.07% year-on-year, just below the 8.89% recorded in the same period of 2022. It contributed 2.64 percentage points to the total added value growth of the entire economy.

The services sector saw significant boosts in foreign trade, transportation, and tourism to meet both regional and global consumption demand. The added value of this sector grew by 8.14% - the highest mid-year increase from 2011 to 2025.

In the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sector, agriculture maintained stable growth, with the sector's added value up 3.51% year-on-year, contributing 0.29 percentage points to overall economic growth.

In the first six months of 2025, total import-export turnover exceeded USD 432 billion, up 16.1% year-on-year. Exports rose by 14.4%, and imports by 17.9%. The trade surplus reached USD 7.63 billion.

Regarding business activity, the country saw 91,200 newly established enterprises in the first half of the year with registered capital totaling approximately USD 32.3 billion and nearly 591,100 registered workers. These figures represent increases of 11.8% in the number of enterprises, 9.9% in registered capital, and 13.9% in labor compared to the same period last year.

The average registered capital per newly established business in H1 2025 was approximately USD 356,000, down 1.7% from H1 2024.

Additionally, over 61,500 enterprises resumed operations, a 57.2% increase over the same period in 2024. This brought the total number of new and resumed businesses in the first six months to more than 152,700, a 26.5% increase year-on-year.

On average, nearly 25,500 businesses were either newly established or resumed operations each month.

The General Statistics Office also reported that the consumer price index (CPI) for Q2 2025 rose by 3.31% year-on-year. The average CPI for the first half of the year increased by 3.27%, while core inflation rose by 3.16%.

In June 2025, the CPI increased by 0.48% compared to the previous month. Prices rose in 10 out of 11 groups of goods and services, with only the post and telecommunications group showing a price decline.

Nguyen Le