Vietnam’s domestic carbon exchange has recorded its first sustained trading activity, with seven transactions and a cumulative 1,310 emission allowances changing hands since the platform launched on the Hanoi Stock Exchange on June 29, 2026. The figures were disclosed this week by Nguyen Tuan Quang, Acting Deputy Director of the Department of Climate Change at the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, with the most recent transaction taking place on September 15. The volumes are small by any regional benchmark, but they mark the point where Southeast Asia’s newest compliance market stopped being a ceremony and started being a market, and where the Article 6 supply pipeline behind it became the number to watch.
What Has Actually Traded
According to Quang, two types of commodities trade on the exchange: greenhouse gas emission allowances and carbon credits. The activity so far sits almost entirely on the allowance side, with quotas allocated to covered facilities for the 2025-2026 period. The first real compliance test comes in 2027, when those facilities will be required to surrender allowances in line with regulations.
The legal scaffolding is Decree 06/2022/ND-CP on greenhouse gas mitigation, issued in January 2022 and since amended twice: by Decree 119/2025/ND-CP in June 2025 and by Decree 83/2026/ND-CP in March 2026. That decree stack defines which credits are eligible to trade, and the list is short by design.
Only Three Types of Credits Qualify
Under the current rules, just three categories of carbon credits can be listed on the exchange. First, credits generated under bilateral cooperation mechanisms between Vietnam and partner countries under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. Second, credits issued under the UN carbon standard pursuant to Article 6.4. Third, credits issued by competent Vietnamese authorities for projects in the agriculture and environment, industry and trade, and construction sectors.
That eligibility filter is doing two jobs at once. It keeps the domestic exchange aligned with internationally authorised supply, and it forces project developers to pick a lane early: build toward Article 6 authorisation, or build toward a domestic standard that the government itself has issued.
The December Article 6 Pipeline
On the Article 6.2 side, Vietnam has already launched cooperation with Singapore and Japan, and meetings of the Vietnam-Singapore and Vietnam-Japan Joint Committees are scheduled for the coming period. The earliest projects under these mechanisms are expected to launch in December 2026, which would start feeding internationally authorised credits into the exchange’s supply side.
The Article 6.4 queue is larger. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment has issued approval letters for 23 Vietnamese projects to transition to the UN mechanism, representing more than 10 million potential carbon credits for the 2021-2025 period. Project participants are completing the remaining UNFCCC requirements so the projects can be formally registered and the credits issued. Once that happens, officials expect a relatively large new source of supply for the market.
Domestic standards are filling in as well. Vietnam’s forest carbon credit standard was issued by the Minister of Science and Technology on August 11, 2026, and the climate department expects forest projects certified under it to supply the exchange in the future. Flagship emission reduction projects, including the one million hectare high-quality, low-emission rice programme in the Mekong Delta, would be fully eligible for listing if their credits are developed through bilateral cooperation mechanisms or the UN standard.
What This Means for Buyers and Developers
For international buyers, Vietnam’s exchange is not yet a liquidity venue. Seven trades in eleven weeks is a signalling market, not a procurement channel. The actionable information is structural: the government has chosen to make Article 6 authorisation the gateway to domestic credit supply, which means credits that clear Singapore or Japan joint committee processes, or Article 6.4 registration, will carry a built-in compliance premium inside Vietnam as well as abroad.
For project developers, the 23 projects queued for Article 6.4 transition are the competitive frontier. Developers holding Vietnamese assets should map their pipelines against the three eligibility categories now, because the December joint committee projects will set the first real price benchmarks for authorised Vietnamese supply. Forest and rice-sector projects have a defined standards pathway for the first time.
For investors, the watch item is sequencing. Allowance surrender obligations arrive in 2027, before large credit volumes are likely to be issued, which sets up a classic early-market tension between compliance demand and eligible supply.
What to Watch
Three markers will show whether the exchange scales from here. First, whether the December 2026 Article 6.2 projects with Singapore and Japan launch on schedule and produce the first authorised credits listed domestically. Second, the pace of UNFCCC registration for the 23 transitioning projects and the timing of the first Article 6.4 issuances against the 10 million credit pipeline. Third, trading behaviour as the 2027 surrender deadline approaches: whether allowance volumes and prices pick up as covered facilities move from testing to compliance buying.
