Ho Chi Minh City (HCM) is not just Vietnam’s largest metropolis - it is its economic engine, its magnet for foreign capital, and a veritable Southeast Asian boomtown.

Once colloquially known as Saigon and still called the same name by many locals and visitors alike, in recent years the city has emerged as a symbol of Vietnam’s transformation from post-war austerity to twenty-first century ambition.

The numbers tell their own story. On just 0.6% of Vietnam’s land, the city generates roughly a fifth of national GDP and nearly 28% of state budget revenues. HCM is also the end destination for close to 35% of foreign investment projects.

By 2024, HCM’s gross regional domestic product hit VND1.78 quadrillion, or about $70.3bn, almost double the 2015 figure, a 93.5% leap in under a decade, as reported by VietNamNet News.

Its 2023 per-capita GDP of around $6,730, sits comfortably above the national average, the same local publication reports.

That prosperity is most obviously visible in the skyline. The Bitexco Financial Tower, a lotus-shaped skyscraper opened in 2010, and was once the tallest building in Vietnam. Even though the ‘tallest title’ has now been lost, it remains a potent symbol of modernisation in the city devastated by war as recently as the mid-1970s.

Across city districts, high-rises sprout beside half-finished metro lines and master-planned zones such as Thủ Thiêm and Phú Mỹ Hưng, designed to project the city into the league of Singapore and Shanghai according to Vogue. The economic shift underlying this transformation is just as dramatic: by 2023, services made up nearly 65% of output, while agriculture had been reduced to a mere 0.5% Vietnam.vn says. 

With all the construction and buzz seen from dawn till dusk on city streets, it is good old-fashioned trade that keeps the city humming. The Saigon Port remains a vital artery for the Mekong Delta, one of only a handful in Vietnam able to host post-Panamax vessels. Because of this, exports through the city hit $47bn in 2024, a recovery from previous dips Vietnam.vn reports. Foreign investors are betting heavily on HCM too: in 2023, the city attracted $6bn, or 16.3% of all registered FDI nationwide.

The momentum is partly structural. Vietnam has become deeply embedded in global supply chains, benefiting from its proximity to China to the north and its relative political stability and long coastline. The so-called China + 1 strategy, which has seen companies from Apple to Samsung shift parts of their production south, has only reinforced Ho Chi Minh’s status as the country’s investment magnet.

Policymakers in the capital far to the north – Hanoi - want to capitalise on that trajectory. To this end the Ministry of Planning and Investment has set ambitious targets: by 2030, Ho Chi Minh City should account for 40% of national GDP, with per-capita output rising to about $14,500. By 2045, the vision is bolder still – the intent being to place HCM as a global financial and innovation hub on par with the region’s leading cities.

That ambition only feeds into the “boomtown” narrative and as any regular traveller around Southeast Asia will attest, there are few cities growing as quickly or with such vibrancy as is HCM. The ‘boomtown’ label thus captures the city’s breakneck evolution: glittering towers rising above once low-slung streets, exports surging even as metro lines are dug beneath, and a youthful population reshaping consumption patterns.

Vogue once described HCM as a city defined by “fast, furious” transformation, while AP News cast its trajectory in terms of a city pushing for global relevance.

That push is alive and well, glaringly so, and from the vantage point of Southeast Asia, Ho Chi Minh City has become a city project impossible to ignore: a metropolis whose growth is both the measure of Vietnam’s ambitions and the embodiment of the region’s restless dynamism.