Inequality in Vietnam

Vietnam has more than 110 super-rich people, as announced by the World Bank. The super-rich include state agency officials. No one knows the actual values of their assets. This is because the figures about individuals’ assets are not made public in Vietnam. The World Bank and other organizations can only count super-rich people by considering their stock assets or deposits at banks. They do not have information about other assets, including cash in family coffers or  houses, because in many cases, the houses are under other people’s names.

There is one super-rich person for every one million people in Vietnam. Vietnam ranks second among Southeast Asian countries with the sharpest increases in the numbers of super-rich, according to the World Bank.

The country’s average income per capita, as announced by the Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at the Vietnam Development Partner Forum in late 2013, is $1,960 per annum. If one needs to have at least $30 million to be a super-rich person, then a Vietnamese would have to work for 17,500 consecutive years to be recognized as super-rich.

In September 2013, a Swiss bank reported that there were over 200 super-rich people in Vietnam. Super rich people, as defined by the bank, are those who have assets valued at $30 million and higher. The bank counted the number of Vietnamese super-rich based on Vietnamese deposits in banks.