Thailand vs Vietnam — GDP May Be Overtaken by 2030

What Changed Since the March 2026 Edition

Five months and one set of full-year figures are enough to overturn some conclusions. The table below compares what the first edition stated against the latest position, showing what still holds, what needed correcting, and what is entirely new.

Comparing Fundamentals — Geography vs Demographics

Thailand's land area is about 55% larger, but Vietnam has roughly 42% more people and a median age seven years younger. The heavier number is the age structure: 15.4% of Thais are already 65 or older, against 9.5% in Vietnam, which also has proportionally almost twice as many children in the system. This is the demographic dividend Vietnam can still draw on for roughly two more decades, while Thailand has entered an aged society at an income level that is not yet high.

GDP — The Gap Widened in 2025, but the Crossover Still Sits at 2029

This is where the new figures give a materially different picture from the first edition, and it deserves to be stated plainly — in 2025 the nominal GDP gap between Thailand and Vietnam did not narrow; it widened, from $70 billion in 2024 to $83 billion. The cause is not Thai acceleration but baht appreciation, which made Thailand's dollar-denominated GDP appear to grow about 9% while the real economy grew only 2.4%.

GDP and PPP figures from the IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2026 · Thai exports from the Ministry of Commerce · Vietnamese exports from Vietnam's National Statistics Office (GSO). Note: the GSO reports Vietnam's 2025 nominal GDP at roughly $514 billion, above the IMF figure, because of differences in exchange rate and method. This article uses the IMF series throughout so both countries are compared on one basis.

Seven Years of GDP Growth — Clearer Than Any Single Year

A single year's growth rate can be distorted by temporary factors. Lined up across seven years, the difference becomes structural rather than cyclical.

The last two rows are worth reading twice — over seven years Vietnam's real economy grew by roughly half again, while Thailand's grew by about 8%. That gap has not closed in 2026 either: Vietnam grew 8.18% in the first half against roughly 2.3% for Thailand, whose second quarter slowed to 1.9%, the lowest among ASEAN's major economies.

"In 2020 Thailand contracted 6.1% because it leaned on tourism, while Vietnam still grew 2.9% on a better-diversified production base. The lesson is not in that year's numbers — it is that five years later, the structure which produced that difference is still in place."

- Sureeraya Limpaibul, Grand Linux Solution

The Crossover Point — What the IMF's April 2026 Outlook Projects

The latest projections still place the nominal GDP crossover at 2029, matching the first edition. The path there, however, has changed: Thailand pulled further ahead in 2025 on currency, then the gap collapses quickly through 2027-2028, because the IMF expects Thailand to grow just 1.5% in 2026 and 2.1-2.5% in the years after, while Vietnam stays in the 5.4-7.1% range.

Measured by real purchasing power (PPP), however — which reflects the economic size people actually command better than a market exchange rate does — the crossover is not 2029 but this year, 2026. The IMF puts 2026 PPP GDP at $1.964 trillion for Thailand and $2.025 trillion for Vietnam, meaning Vietnam is already ahead by roughly $62 billion, and the gap widens from here: by 2030, Vietnam reaches $2.750 trillion against Thailand's $2.319 trillion.

What Has Vietnam Already "Won"?

1. Samsung — Half the World's Samsung Phones Are Built in Vietnam

• Samsung has invested more than $20 billion in Vietnam across six plants
• It produces roughly 50% of Samsung's global handset output there, employing over 100,000 people
• What drew it in the first place: a lower statutory wage floor, a younger workforce, and broader FTA coverage (CPTPP, EVFTA)

2. FPT Corporation — An IT Firm Exporting Services Worldwide

• Over 60,000-80,000 staff across 30 countries, delivering software development to Fortune 500 clients including Airbus and European automakers
• Now expanding into AI factory and data-centre businesses with global chip partners
• Thailand has no domestically owned technology firm exporting services at comparable scale

3. VinFast — An EV Maker Listed on a US Exchange

• Its Haiphong plant has capacity for 250,000-300,000 vehicles a year, with additional plants in India and Indonesia
• Exports to the US, Canada, Europe, Indonesia and the Philippines
• The point is not the sales figure but that Vietnam has an automotive brand of its own, while Thailand builds for foreign brands

4. Viettel — A Telco That Competes Abroad

• Operations in more than ten countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Haiti, Mozambique, Tanzania and others)
• Develops its own 5G base station equipment rather than only buying technology
• Thailand's operators are strong domestically but earn almost nothing overseas

5. Stock Market Upgrade to Emerging Market — Effective 21 September 2026

This is entirely new since the March edition. In its September 2025 country classification review, FTSE Russell announced it would reclassify Vietnam from Frontier Market to Secondary Emerging Market, confirming the decision in April 2026 with an effective date of 21 September 2026. Vietnamese equities enter the indices at a 10% weighting first, rising to 20% in March 2027 and to 35% across two further steps in 2027. Analysts estimate net foreign inflows of roughly $6-10 billion.

6. Overtaking Thailand in the Innovation Rankings for the First Time

WIPO's Global Innovation Index 2025 ranks Vietnam 44th and Thailand 45th out of 139 economies, lifting Vietnam to third in ASEAN behind Singapore (5th) and Malaysia (34th). A single place apart is not significant in itself, but the two trend lines have pointed in clearly different directions over the past decade.

Vietnam's 2025 Structural Reforms — What the GDP Figures Do Not Yet Show

During 2025 Vietnam pushed through three institutional reforms at once. Thai organisations doing business with Vietnam should track these, because they affect permitting, registration and public-sector counterparties alike.

The line to note is "digital economy at 30% of GDP by 2030", which says Vietnam does not intend to stop at being an assembly base. Any organisation on that same path meets the same prerequisite: the back office has to hold reliable data first. That is why investing in an ERP system and a data warehouse is usually the first step in a plan like this rather than the last.

PISA — The Numbers That Have Not Changed, and the Round Released on 8 September 2026

Vietnam's GDP per capita is roughly 40% below Thailand's, yet its PISA scores sit close to the OECD average, while Thailand trails that average by 76 to 97 points across every subject. A gap of that size is statistically meaningful — researchers commonly treat about 20 PISA points as equivalent to one additional year of schooling.

One note for readers using this data in planning: the OECD releases PISA 2025 results on 8 September 2026. That round takes science as its main domain, involved more than 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies, and adds a new measure of computational problem solving. The figures above are therefore the latest citable set as at the date of this update, and should be revisited once the new round lands.

Where Does Thailand Still Lead?

This section has improved since the March edition, because 2025 brought Thailand one genuinely weighty new investment base.

Two items from the earlier edition do need correcting, because the new data no longer supports them. Thai vehicle production in 2025 was 1,455,569 units, down 0.9%, with export production down 8.2% to 935,750 units even as domestic sales rose 8.5%. That is well below the 1.8-1.9 million the first edition cited, and below Thailand's own historical peak. On capital markets, SET market capitalisation fell 8.6% in 2025 with roughly $3 billion of net foreign outflows, before rebounding about 26% with over $2 billion of net inflows in 2026 — a real recovery, but one measured from a base that had fallen for three years.

A New Variable Absent From the March Edition — US Import Tariffs

During 2025 the United States set reciprocal tariff rates for its trading partners, and in October 2025 both Thailand and Vietnam agreed trade frameworks with Washington. The outcome has shifted the cost calculus of choosing a production base in this region.

The last two rows matter more than they look. A 40% rate on transshipped goods means producers must prove origin at the level of individual material lines, not merely at the level of the shipping declaration. For a Thai factory exporting to the US, that translates directly into a systems requirement: tracing a finished item back to raw material lots and supplier invoices. With thousands of line items, that is very hard to do across separate spreadsheets — the article on the risks of running a business on Excel sets out exactly where it tends to break. Having a system that links goods receipt to costs and source documents in one database therefore shifts from an efficiency question to a condition of export.

Wages and FTAs — An Equation Starting to Shift

The first two rows have moved in Thailand's favour. Vietnam's minimum wage rose 7.2% nationwide at the start of 2026, which Vietnam's Ministry of Home Affairs assessed would raise overall production costs by roughly 0.5-0.6%, and by around 1.1-1.2% in labour-intensive industries such as textiles and footwear. The wage gap is still wide, but it is no longer widening — and combined with Thailand's one-point lower US tariff, in thin-margin goods a single point counts.

The row that has not moved is CPTPP. Thailand signalled interest back in 2021 but has yet to reach a policy conclusion, while Vietnam has been a member for seven years. The EU FTA, by contrast, made real progress in 2026 and is worth watching closely, since concluding it would close one of the largest remaining gaps with Vietnam.

The Investment Picture — Two Measures That Must Be Read Together

FDI figures are where country comparisons most often go wrong, because each country publishes a different measure — investment applications are not the same as money actually received. The table below separates them.

Note: the Thai figures are applications for investment promotion filed with the BOI — declared intent, not money already received. A complete public series for Thailand's 2025 net FDI on a balance-of-payments basis was not available as at the date of this update, so the 2024 figure is shown to indicate the order of magnitude. Vietnam's GSO reports registered capital and actual disbursement separately.

Read together, two things stand out. Investment interest in Thailand rose sharply and genuinely in 2025, especially in data centres and AI, which are high-value per project and tie up locations for years. Meanwhile Vietnam's newly registered capital barely grew (+0.5%), yet actual disbursement rose 9% — meaning projects registered in earlier rounds are now being built. Both are good news of different kinds, and neither settles the question on one year's data.

7 Things Thailand Must Urgently Do

1. Education Reform — Still the Most Urgent Item

Thailand's PISA mathematics score trails Vietnam's by 75 points, roughly equivalent to more than three additional years of schooling. The issue is not the level of spending, since Thailand's education budget relative to GDP is not low, but the results obtained for what is spent. The PISA 2025 results published on 8 September 2026 will show how much has actually shifted over five years.

2. Digital Transformation for SMEs — 99% of Thai Businesses

More than 99% of Thai businesses are SMEs, and most still run on data scattered across many files. Investing in a connected ERP system, data warehouse and accounting system pays back faster than many organisations expect, because the first return is not headcount reduction but a faster month-end close and seeing true costs before setting prices. For mid-sized organisations, ERP for SMEs covers where to start.

3. Conclude the EU FTA and Decide on CPTPP

By 2026 the EU negotiations have covered two-thirds of all chapters, with the tenth round hosted in Thailand in late September 2026 — the closest this has been to a result in years. CPTPP remains an open decision, while Vietnam has been drawing benefit from both agreements for several years.

4. Sustain the Downward Trend in Household Debt

Household debt has fallen from 95.5% of GDP in Q1 2021 to 86.7% in Q4 2025 — the right direction, but still short of the Bank of Thailand's 80% target and still high by regional standards. At company level the same problem appears as spending discipline: keeping budgets from overrunning requires seeing committed amounts before approval, not at the close.

5. Move From Assembler to Designer

Vehicle production falling to 1.46 million units in 2025, with exports down 8.2%, signals that serving as an assembly base for foreign brands no longer provides the security it once did. Most of the value added still sits with brand and technology owners. Thailand needs to move up the chain rather than compete on cost at the same tier — a lesson that China's technology strategy and South Korea's path both point to.

6. Turn the Data Centre Wave Into Added Value, Not Just Floor Space

THB 746 billion in digital-sector investment applications during 2025 is the clearest opportunity Thailand has had in years. But data centres themselves generate relatively little employment per unit of capital. The question to answer is how to build a software and services industry around them, which requires work on both workforce capability and the information security standards that global enterprise customers demand.

7. Build Thai Software That Sells Across the Region

Vietnam has FPT, with tens of thousands of staff exporting IT services worldwide; Thailand has no company at that scale. But Thailand does hold one real advantage: deep familiarity with how local government and enterprises are actually regulated and run, something imported software adapts to only with difficulty. That runs from an ERP system that genuinely handles Thai procurement and budget regulations, down to the database layer and certified development processes.

Summary — The 2025 Data Sharpens the Picture Rather Than Reversing It

The conclusion from the March edition still holds, but the 2025 figures make two points worth stating directly. First, Thailand is not in retreat. Exports set an all-time record in 2025, investment applications jumped 67%, all three global cloud providers now operate Thai regions, household debt is falling, and in Q2 2026 private investment grew at its fastest rate in 54 quarters. Second, none of that is yet enough to close the growth gap, because Vietnam is not standing still either — over seven years its real economy expanded by roughly 49% against Thailand's roughly 8%.

For Thai executives, the value of a country-level comparison like this is not in knowing who overtakes whom in which year. It is in seeing that the variables which determine national outcomes are the same ones that determine organisational outcomes — productivity per person, the speed at which real data becomes visible, and the ability to prove origin and cost when trade rules change. None of those three is solved by national policy alone; each is also addressed in the back office of individual organisations.

"Vietnam has already passed Thailand on purchasing power this year, and the IMF puts the nominal crossover at 2029. But the figure that carries more weight than any crossover is income per head, where Thailand still leads by 1.7 times and will for years yet. Thailand's task is therefore not to defend a ranking, but to raise productivity per person before the demographic structure narrows its options."

- Sureeraya Limpaibul, Grand Linux Solution

Other Country Comparisons in This Series

• Thailand vs Malaysia — the neighbour whose income per head already overtook Thailand's
• Thailand vs Indonesia — a market four times larger that is closing the technology gap
• Thailand vs South Korea — a country whose income per head was close to Thailand's 40 years ago
• Thailand vs China — industrial strategies that diverged from the very start

References

• IMF — World Economic Outlook (April 2026) — nominal GDP, PPP GDP, income per head, and projections through 2031
• National Statistics Office of Viet Nam (GSO) — 8.02% GDP growth, $475 billion of exports, 2025 FDI
• Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) — Thai GDP for 2025 and Q2 2026
• Ministry of Commerce, Thailand — 2025 export value
• Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) — 2025 investment promotion applications
• Bank of Thailand — household debt, Q4 2025
• OECD — PISA — PISA 2022 results and the 8 September 2026 release date for PISA 2025
• WIPO — Global Innovation Index 2025 — Vietnam 44th, Thailand 45th
• FTSE Russell — Country Classification Review — Vietnam's upgrade, effective 21 September 2026
• World Bank — Logistics Performance Index 2023
• World Bank — Open Data — net FDI on a balance-of-payments basis, population