Bloomberg’s feature of 23 October 2026 rides the Reunification Express, the century-old line between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, to examine Vietnam’s plan for a new north-south high-speed railway. At an estimated USD 65 billion, around 13% of GDP, the project sits at the heart of the government’s goal of reaching high-income status by 2045.
Our view
Our Managing Partner Marco Förster spoke to the Bloomberg team in Hanoi. He sees a rare window of economic opportunity for Vietnam, and a government determined to seize it, while cautioning that it is “trying to do too much too quickly”.
What the article covers
The journey south shows both the ambition and the obstacles: land clearance and resettlement, a power grid already under strain, limited domestic experience with high-speed rail, open questions on financing, and the engineering challenge of laying a straight, fast line through Vietnam’s narrow and mountainous geography. Groundbreaking has slipped to the end of 2027.
The project in numbers
Vietnam’s National Assembly approved the investment policy for the North-South high-speed railway in November 2024. The line will run more than 1,500 km between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with 23 stations across 20 provinces and cities, and is expected to cut the rail journey from about 30 hours to around five. At the time of approval, the cost was put at USD 67 billion, with construction planned to start in 2027 and completion targeted for 2035.
Why it matters for international suppliers
A build-out on this scale creates openings well beyond civil works: rolling stock and signalling, power supply and substations, engineering and project management, and the skills needed to operate and maintain the line for decades. Several of these themes, from planning rail as one integrated network to power as the critical path, also came up at the SVEF Hanoi 2026 infrastructure panel our Managing Partner moderated.
Read the full feature on Bloomberg (subscription may be required).
Further reading
More from Stratburg
- Building at Vietnam speed: moderating the SVEF Hanoi 2026 infrastructure panel
- Executive Roundtable with Asia Society Switzerland on Vietnam’s economic transformation
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