Vietnam is entering a new development phase with clearer long-term ambitions—double-digit GDP growth and upper-middle-income status by 2040, writes Dalberg Partner Chris Malone in CafeBiz. But the old growth engines are fading. The rural-to-factory labor pipeline, once adding over a million workers per year, has slowed to a few hundred thousand. The “demographic dividend” that once contributed 1–2 percentage points to annual GDP is nearly exhausted. The next engine must be productivity—specifically Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which reflects management quality, innovation, skills, and resource efficiency. proposes building regional economic clusters as engines of productivity.

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