Vietnamese manufacturers and exporters face a clear supply-chain priority: move beyond low-cost production towards higher-value roles in regional networks by building industrial clusters, improving infrastructure connectivity and making supply chains more transparent.
The ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), scheduled for completion in 2026, is being positioned as a route to reduce digital trade frictions across the region, with potential implications for exporters, importers, apparel manufacturers and sourcing teams that depend on faster cross-border transactions, data flows and documentation.
Local media reported, citing the forum on Viet Nam and ASEAN in global value chains held in HCM City, that the country’s challenge is not only export expansion but the place domestic firms occupy within value-creation networks.
The event was organised recently by the HCM City Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (HCMC C4IR). It brought together representatives from the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), businesses and other organisations.
Vân Nguyen, regional agenda lead at WEF’s Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains, said at the forum that geopolitical tensions, technological change, climate pressures and demographic shifts are reshaping global supply chains and forcing companies to reconsider how networks are configured.
Nguyen said ASEAN has an opening to strengthen its position as a trusted manufacturing hub as markets become more fragmented. She pointed to the region’s ability to connect complementary capabilities across member countries through regional value chains, with digital standards, technology cooperation and talent collaboration supporting scale, resilience, innovation, higher-quality investment, higher-value activities and longer-term growth.
Nguyen Duc Huy, deputy director of HCMC C4IR, cited the World Bank’s Viet Nam 2045 Report as showing that the participation rate of domestic enterprises in global value chains fell from 35 per cent in 2009 to 18 per cent in 2023. He said the decline continued over 14 years even as exports rose, underlining that firms need to capture more value rather than only ship more goods.
Huy said ASEAN, with a population of more than 700 million, is among the world’s fastest-growing economic blocs, but intra-regional trade accounts for only about 22 per cent of total trade, below the corresponding share in the European Union.
He also said tariffs are no longer the main obstacle, as the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement has removed up to 98.6 per cent of tariff lines. The remaining barriers are procedures, standards and systems that vary by country, which DEFA is intended to address by creating a framework that connects regional value chains.
Anne-Katrin Pfister, policy lead for digital trade in Asia-Pacific at WEF, described DEFA as the world’s first region-wide digital economy agreement and said it aims to bring ASEAN’s 11 national markets, including Viet Nam, closer to a single digitally connected regional market.
Pfister said the agreement could unlock a $1-2 trillion digital economy, support the participation and growth of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, develop interoperable digital infrastructure and strengthen ASEAN’s role in shaping global digital rules.
DEFA proposes provisions covering cross-border e-commerce, payments and electronic invoicing, digital identification and authentication, online safety and cybersecurity, cross-border data flows and data protection, competition policy and emerging areas such as artificial intelligence.
Implementation, however, faces constraints from uneven digital readiness across ASEAN, including gaps in infrastructure, skills and institutional capacity. Differences also remain in national regulatory frameworks for data, privacy, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital trade, the reports added.
Source: FIBRE2FASHION
Share:
<p>Time: November 2025<br /> By: WTO and International Trade Group, Legal Department – VCCI</p>
