[REVISION HISTORY]

Vietnam economic growth and business identity theft trends

Updated 17 times since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

What changed

2026-10-08 02:44 UTC → 2026-10-22 03:02 UTC · added ~~removed~~

Vietnam continues to experience significant economic shifts. While the first half of 2026 saw a divergence between high GDP growth (8.18%) and high company ~~exits,~~ exits (151,100 businesses), data from the first eight months ~~of 2026~~ shows a complex ~~trend in business activity.~~ trend. New business registrations and returning enterprises rose by ~~7.7% compared to the previous year,~~ 7.7%, with registered capital increasing by 36.2% to 1,708 trillion VND. However, the number of employees registered by these new businesses fell by ~~15.4% to nearly 657,700,~~ 15.4%, suggesting a ~~more cautious approach to hiring or a~~ shift toward ~~automation.~~ automation or cautious hiring. Recent administrative efforts to clean tax data have uncovered significant irregularities. In the first eight months of 2026, nearly 95,000 tax codes were deactivated. ~~As part of this~~ Authorities clarified that while 23,017 were new requests, the remainder were backlogs from previous years. The campaign, ~~authorities identified approximately 325,500~~ titled ‘Tax Code Cleaning - Removing Business Bottlenecks’, targets businesses that have ceased operations without formal dissolution or are no longer ~~operating~~ at registered ~~addresses that carry tax debts. In Thai Nguyen, the tax department~~ addresses. This effort has ~~specifically ordered audits of transactions involving 108 companies~~ identified ~~for using illegal invoices.~~ approximately 325,500 businesses with tax debts. The ~~cleaning~~ campaign also exposed approximately 4,000 cases of identity theft, where personal information was used to fraudulently establish businesses. Victims often discover the impersonation during administrative procedures or ~~exit control. One resident in Ho Chi Minh City found his national ID used to open a company, leaving him responsible for nearly 3 billion VND in tax debt, while others have faced~~ encounter exit bans at airports due to unpaid corporate taxes linked to these fraudulent registrations. Trinh Thi Huong, Deputy Director of the Department of Private Enterprises and Collective Economic Sectors, noted that the current self-declaration ~~registration~~ mechanism has been exploited. The Ministry of Finance is now coordinating with registration authorities to revoke fraudulent entries and is researching amendments to the Law on ~~Enterprises~~ Enterprises. Additionally, the Department of Private Enterprise and Collective Economic Development has identified 42,911 businesses that failed to ~~prevent future impersonation.~~ declare beneficial ownership information since July 2025, prioritizing them for inspection.

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