Central Group Unveils $3bn Vietnam Investment Drive

 

CRC, Central Pattana and Centara unveil $3bn in fresh Vietnam investment, pushing into secondary cities as Bangkok marks 50 years of Thai-Vietnamese ties.

 

Central Group has put a firm number on how far it intends to take its Vietnam business over the next decade: $3 billion (roughly 116 billion baht) in fresh investment across retail, property, and hospitality, layered on top of the $1.5 billion the group has already spent building its Vietnamese operations since 2012.

 

The commitment was laid out at a press briefing in Bangkok on Thursday (September 17) by Wallaya Chirathivat, president of Central Group, and Olivier Langlet, chief executive officer of Central Retail Vietnam, at the opening of the tenth Vietnamese Week in Thailand.

 

It is the first time the group has attached a single, consolidated figure to the next phase of investment across Central Retail Corporation (CRC), property arm Central Pattana (CPN) and Centara Hotels & Resorts. The $3 billion splits into two distinct pots.

 

 

Central Retail itself will put up $1.5 billion of its own capital over three to five years, funding a straightforward expansion of its store network.

 

The remaining $1.5 billion sits with the wider Central Group—spanning Central Pattana's property push and Centara's hotel expansion—and is being structured as a joint-venture programme, with Central and its local partners each expected to fund half of the projects that come out of it.

 

Central Retail's $1.5 billion will fund roughly 50 additional stores on top of the 300-plus outlets it already runs across 26 of Vietnam's 34 provinces, extending a network that already handles around 500,000 customer visits a day and employs some 13,000 people, 99.5 per cent of them Vietnamese nationals.

 

 

 

 

The joint-venture pot is earmarked chiefly for Central Pattana, on a markedly longer timeline of 10 to 15 years that reflects the slower gestation of large-format shopping centre and mixed-use property projects.

 

Executives said the company was still assessing whether individual sites would be developed directly or through partnerships, citing Vietnamese developer Sun Group as one potential collaborator.

 

Asked what kind of property CPN would prioritise, Central Group president Wallaya said the focus would be "mainly retail and mixed-use developments", with offices and hotels possible "in the future".

 

The same joint venture pot also covers Centara Hotels & Resorts, which already operates 52 hotels across nine countries and is expanding its Vietnamese footprint beyond the 984-room Centara Mirage Resort Mui Ne, which opened in 2021.

 

Two further properties in Van Don, in the northern province of Quang Ninh, are due to open before the end of this year, adding another 977 rooms.

 

 

Together, the two pots amount to a doubling of Central Group's cumulative Vietnam investment inside little more than a decade — a commitment that builds on, rather than replaces, an expansion strategy the company had already begun signalling.

 

Central Retail said earlier this week it intended to add 35 to 37 new stores by 2028, split between GO! hypermarkets and smaller mini go! supermarkets, as it pushes into secondary cities and rural communities.

 

Thursday's announcement puts a firmer figure and a longer runway around that push and adds the joint-venture property and hospitality dimensions previously discussed only in general terms.

 

 

 

 

A market still worth chasing 

Central Group's confidence rests on macroeconomic fundamentals that have held up better than in many regional peers.

 

"Vietnam continues to stand out as one of ASEAN's fastest-growing economies, with GDP growth projected to reach as high as 7.2 per cent this year, reflecting the country's strong market potential and expanding consumer purchasing power," Wallaya said. "Together, these factors continue to strengthen Central Group's confidence in Vietnam's potential and drive our ongoing investment in the country."

 

Retail sales and consumer services expanded at a considerably faster clip in the first half of the year, according to Vietnamese government data, reinforcing Central's view that domestic consumption remains one of the economy's more reliable growth engines.

 

Central Retail Vietnam has built a leading position in the hypermarket segment, where executives put its market share at close to 40 per cent, the country's largest hypermarket operator by that measure.

 

The picture is more mixed elsewhere: in convenience stores and minimarts, homegrown chains such as WinMart retain the advantage.

 

Over the past eight years, Central Retail Vietnam has generated cumulative sales of more than 330 billion baht, executives said, money that has recirculated through the economy via wages, tax payments, supplier contracts and community programmes.

 

 

 

Land costs and regulatory grey areas

Central Retail Vietnam's chief executive was notably candid about the obstacles still facing the group's expansion. Asked about progress and hurdles around the investment plan, Olivier Langlet identified two persistent friction points.

 

"The main challenges are related to regulations," he said. "Vietnam has done an amazing job in simplifying paperwork, which used to be quite heavy. However, some laws remain unclear in terms of interpretation, and we need to understand them better in order to grow faster."

 

The bigger constraint, he suggested, is land.

 

"Land is very expensive in Vietnam, so we need to invest carefully to ensure an appropriate return on investment for our shareholders. There should not be a disconnection between land prices and the real value of the land."

 

 

Those pressures help explain why Central Retail's next wave of stores looks different from its first.

 

"When entering Vietnam around 15 years ago, the focus was naturally on tier-one cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City," Langlet said. "Over time, we have seen that consumers in tier-three and tier-four cities are creating more value and more opportunities."

 

Its development team has scouted around 200 potential sites across all four city tiers, though only the top 50 to 70 are being pursued immediately. Rather than a single retail format, executives described a "multi-format" approach spanning shopping malls, hypermarkets, standalone outlets and supermarkets, tailored to what each location can support.

 

New openings next year, the company said, will draw on all four tiers, with the pace shaped as much by the willingness of local authorities to fast-track modern retail as by Central's own targets.

 

 

Central Retail frames its Vietnam expansion around what it calls the "Better for Vietnam" vision, built on three pillars aligned with the country's own 2050 development goals: sourcing, where it works with more than 2,000 domestic suppliers to improve product quality and packaging, underpinning a claim that over 90 per cent of goods on its Vietnamese shelves are locally sourced; food safety and quality, pursued through a "farm-to-store" partnership with growers and a push toward HACCP certification across its network; and workforce development, delivered through university partnerships offering retail training, including inclusion programmes for young people from minority communities.

 

A diplomatic backdrop The investment plans were unveiled against the backdrop of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Vietnam, marked this year by a state visit to Vietnam by His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida, and by the elevation of bilateral ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

 

Central executives linked the group's expansion to that relationship, pointing to Thursday's signing of a memorandum of understanding between Central Retail, NAPAS and VietinBank to extend cross-border QR payments under the VietQR Global scheme.

 

 

 

Thailand and Vietnam have set a bilateral trade target of $25 billion, while Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has separately called for trade to double within three years. Vietnamese Week in Thailand, running at Central World from 17 to 20 September under the theme "Discover the Charm of Vietnam", is the vehicle for much of that exchange.

 

More than 60 Vietnamese businesses are exhibiting this year, offering free space to showcase products from coffee and tea to fish sauce, textiles and processed foods, alongside business-matching sessions with Central Group's retail units.

 

 

 

Over ten years, organisers say, the event has drawn more than a million Thai visitors and worked with over 1,000 Vietnamese entrepreneurs, several of whom have gone on to secure listings in Central's stores in both countries.

 

Whether the newly quantified $3 billion commitment marks a genuine acceleration or simply consolidates spending the group had already signalled will become clearer as individual projects break ground.

 

"By leveraging the strength of our retail and wholesale ecosystem and decades of accumulated expertise, we aim to serve as a bridge connecting consumers, entrepreneurs, and markets across both countries," Wallaya said, closing the briefing.