Vietnam’s domestic carbon exchange has not recorded a single trade since its inaugural session on 29 June. The VN2025 allowance contract, which closed its first day at VND130,000 ($4.95) per tonne of CO2e, has since shown no volume, no value and no closing price on the Hanoi Stock Exchange’s carbon trading portal. For buyers and developers watching Southeast Asia’s newest compliance market, the silence is not a failure signal, but it is a precise map of where the region’s carbon infrastructure still has gaps: no willing sellers, no eligible credits, and a participant base still working out whether it is long or short.
What the First Session Actually Established
The opening auction-like session did produce real numbers. Allowance prices reached as high as VND136,000 ($5.17) per tonne before closing at VND130,000, with more than 1,200 tonnes of CO2e changing hands for a total transaction value of VND161.7 million ($6,150), according to market data reported by The Investor.
The instrument itself is substantial on paper. The VN2025 code represents allowances for the 2025-2026 compliance period covering more than 511 million tonnes of CO2e, and it can be traded until 24 December 2027. Allowances have been allocated, free of charge, to roughly 110 large-emitting facilities in three sectors: thermal power, steel and cement. Around 92 companies are participating in the pilot, including industrial groups such as Hoa Phat, Formosa, EVN, PV Power and Vicem.
Three Reasons the Order Book Is Empty
The first is simple position uncertainty. Many covered companies are still calculating their actual emissions and determining whether they will hold a surplus or a deficit of allowances. Until that accounting is done, neither side of the trade exists: potential sellers will not part with allowances they might need, and potential buyers do not yet know their shortfall.
The second is a supply vacuum on the credit side. Companies seeking to list international credits from projects transitioning out of the clean development mechanism are expected to need another six to eight months to complete the required procedures. Domestic carbon credits face a separate blockage: methodologies for different project types are not yet fully established, so there is little eligible credit supply to bring to the exchange. Under the pilot design, credits may offset up to 30% of a company’s allowance obligation, with borrowing from the subsequent compliance period capped at 15%, so the missing credit pipeline removes a planned source of liquidity.
The third is structural. Transactions are executed as negotiated deals, with buyers and sellers agreeing price, volume and terms bilaterally, rather than through the continuous order matching used in equity markets. That structure keeps trading frequency low by design in the early stages.
Regulators and Brokers Are Playing Down the Silence
At the Vietnam Carbon Forum 2026, themed “From Policy to Action” and held in Ho Chi Minh City on 14 August, Nguyen The Minh, director of the investment banking division at An Binh Securities, argued that low liquidity is normal for an emerging carbon market and compared the moment to the early development of Vietnam’s stock market. Weak liquidity is not unique to Vietnam, he noted, but it can make companies and financial intermediaries more cautious about participating. He called for the pilot mechanism to remain in place long enough to build confidence, and for securities firms to evolve from trading intermediaries into advisors that help companies standardize credits, prepare documentation and list eligible supply.
The exchange operator is focused on plumbing before promotion. Nguyen Tuan Anh, deputy general director of the Hanoi Stock Exchange, said the top priority is keeping the trading system operating safely and smoothly, integrated with the Vietnam Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation and the national registration system. HNX plans to add online trading channels and work with regulators to raise awareness among businesses.
The Parallel Track: Article 6 With Singapore
While the domestic market idles, Vietnam’s international carbon track moved forward. Hanoi has approved its Implementation Agreement with Singapore on carbon credit collaboration under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, VietnamPlus reported. The agreement, signed on 16 September 2025, positions Vietnam as a host country for internationally transferred mitigation outcomes and Singapore, one of the most active Article 6 buyers, as a source of demand.
The contrast matters for market design. Export-oriented credit supply under Article 6 could reach bankable demand faster than the domestic exchange reaches liquidity, which would pull project developers toward international sales rather than domestic offset supply. How Vietnam balances its export rules against the needs of its own compliance market will shape both.
What It Means for Buyers and Developers
For international buyers, Vietnam is a watchlist market, not yet a sourcing market. The compliance price signal, a first-day close near $5 per tonne, sits well below CORSIA-eligible credit prices, but with no secondary trading there is no discovered price to underwrite against. The practical entry point for now is project development: CDM-transition supply and domestic methodologies are the bottlenecks, which means early movers in methodology development and project documentation face less competition.
For the 92 covered companies, the strategic question is timing. Facilities that complete their emissions accounting early will know their position before the market does, and in a negotiated-deal structure with thin counterparties, information advantage translates directly into price advantage.
What to Watch
Three markers will show whether the pilot graduates into a market. First, the arrival of CDM-transition credits, expected within six to eight months: their listing would test the 30% offset window and create the first real two-sided order flow. Second, the finalization of domestic credit methodologies, which determines whether local project supply can list before the pilot ends. Third, the 2026-2028 pilot review itself: Vietnam’s roadmap foresees full operation from 2029, and the scope of any expansion beyond power, steel and cement will signal how ambitious the compliance market intends to be.
Vietnam built the exchange before it built the supply. The next twelve months will show whether that sequencing was a foundation or a false start.
