India–Viet Nam trade corridor No bilateral FTA · AITIGA only · measured from one side

Rendered from the All Frontier Global corridor registry · every figure below carries a numbered source

India and Viet Nam have no bilateral free trade agreement and none is under negotiation in any official source the registry located[1][2]. Preferential access runs exclusively through the plurilateral ASEAN–India Trade in Goods Agreement, to which Viet Nam is party as an ASEAN Member State[3][1], and that agreement’s review is running past a deadline India’s own negotiating department set and published[4]. The corridor is measured from one side only. Viet Nam’s customs administration publishes a full-year, both-direction, unit-precise return; India’s own figures sit behind a form on the Department of Commerce databank that could not be submitted, so no Indian fiscal-year series is recorded at all. The Indian mission’s most recent headline figures are printed under an Indian fiscal-year heading and match Viet Nam’s calendar-2025 customs return to the printed precision; the registry records that as an unresolved conflict and does not decide it. This page renders the corridor registry record.

At a glance

• AgreementNo bilateral FTA; AITIGA only[1][3]India’s own stocktake of its free trade agreements does not name Viet Nam anywhere. The registry records the finding as an argument from an exhaustive list plus official silence, which it states is strong but is not a denial[2][1].
• AITIGA ReviewRunning past its own published deadline[4][5]The Department of Commerce published a target of 2025 and the review is still open. No replacement deadline has been published by anyone, and the leader-level formula loosened rather than tightened between 2024 and 2026[4][6][7].
• Headline trade — Vietnamese seriesUS$16,463,998,888 total, Calendar year 2025 (January-December), read from the 'Year to date' column of the December 2025 reporting-month tables[8][9] derived, not published — derivation belowGeneral Department of Vietnam Customs, Ministry of Finance of Viet Nam. Both companion tables are labelled Preliminary by their own publisher, and neither carries a two-way total column, so the total is the registry’s arithmetic on its own parents[8][9].
• Headline trade — Indian seriesabsent — not obtained[10]A refusal, not an absence: the databank covers this corridor and was refreshed days before the access date, but its figures sit behind a form that could not be submitted. India’s side is represented only by rounded prose figures published by its mission[10][11].

The agreement position

THERE IS NO BILATERAL INDIA-VIET NAM FREE TRADE AGREEMENT, AND NONE IS UNDER NEGOTIATION ACCORDING TO ANY OFFICIAL SOURCE FETCHED. Preferential access between the two countries runs exclusively through the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), a plurilateral instrument to which Viet Nam is party as an ASEAN Member State. The Embassy of India, Hanoi states the position directly: 'ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement concluded in 2009 provides preferential trade regime between India and Viet Nam, and the Agreement is currently under review'. The Press Information Bureau's own stocktake of India's trade agreements, 'India's achievements in Free Trade Agreements for the year 2025-26' (6 March 2026), enumerates nine FTAs covering 38 countries — Mauritius, UAE, Australia, EFTA, the United Kingdom, Oman, New Zealand, the European Union and a United States framework — AND DOES NOT NAME VIET NAM ANYWHERE. That release does not mention ASEAN or AITIGA either.[1][2]

The instrument that does bind them

Agreement on Trade in Goods Under the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Republic of India. NAMING IS INCONSISTENT ACROSS OFFICIAL SOURCES. The Press Information Bureau and the Department of Commerce write 'ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA)'. DGFT's Appendix 2A inverts the order and writes 'India - ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement'. DGFT's certificate-of-origin process document writes 'Indo-ASEAN'. The agreement text itself uses none of these short forms; the acronym it defines internally for origin purposes is 'AIFTA' (ASEAN-India Free Trade Area). The Embassy of India, Hanoi uses both 'ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement' and 'ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA)'.[3][12][13]

NAME DISCIPLINE: 'AITIGA' is the working acronym used by the Government of India and by ASEAN's own meeting calendar; 'AIFTA' is the acronym used inside the treaty text for the free trade area and in the origin rules. They are not interchangeable and both appear below in the exact context in which each source uses them.[3]

Signed at Bangkok, Thailand on 13 August 2009. The treaty text's signature block also carries Ha Noi, Viet Nam as a place of signature, with no date legible in the fetched copy.[3]

1 January 2010. Article 23 provides: 'This Agreement shall enter into force on 1 January 2010 or the date by which such notifications have been made by the Governments of India and at least one (1) ASEAN Member State.'[3]

The bilateral relationship, as officially dated

• Comprehensive Strategic Partnership[1][14]

  Established in 2016. The Embassy of India, Hanoi states relations were 'elevated in 2016 to "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership" during the visit of the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi to Vietnam', and elsewhere that relations were 'elevated naturally as a "comprehensive strategic partnership" during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Viet Nam in 2016'. The Ministry of External Affairs bilateral brief dated 22 November 2022 records the two-step sequence: 'July 2007' elevation to 'Strategic Partnership' during the visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and further elevation to 'Comprehensive Strategic Partnership' in 2016 during Prime Minister Modi's visit. Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs records that 2026 marks the '10th anniversary of comprehensive strategic partnership'.

  ONLY THE YEAR IS OFFICIALLY STATED, NEVER THE DAY OR MONTH, IN ANY SOURCE FETCHED. Every Indian and Vietnamese government source located dates the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to '2016' and to the occasion of Prime Minister Modi's visit to Viet Nam, and stops there. THE EXACT DATE IS A GAP. It is recorded here as officially dated to the year only, per the instruction to record the partnership 'only as officially dated'.

• 1 August 2024

  The Plan of Action[7][1]

  On 1 August 2024, during the visit of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Viet Nam to India, a new Plan of Action was adopted. Prime Minister Modi's press statement of that date records: 'today we have adopted a new Plan of Action', covering defence, security, green economy, emerging technology, energy, port development, agriculture and fisheries. The same statement records that 'Our bilateral trade has increased by more than 85 percent' over the preceding decade, that a USD 300 million credit line to strengthen Viet Nam's maritime security was approved, that 'An agreement has been reached between our central banks for Digital payment connectivity', and that both sides agreed 'the review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement should be concluded as soon as possible'. The Embassy of India, Hanoi's compiled list of instruments dates the 'Plan of Action for Comprehensive Strategic Partnership' to 01.08.2024.

  THE 2024 EVENT WAS NOT A RE-NAMING OF THE PARTNERSHIP. It was a Plan of Action under the existing Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE FETCHED STATES THE PLAN OF ACTION'S PERIOD OF VALIDITY — the years it covers are not published in any source located. The '85 percent' figure is a ministerial framing with no period, basis or source attached and MUST NOT be treated as a statistic.

• 6 May 2026

  Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership[6][15]

  ELEVATED TO 'ENHANCED COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP' (ECSP) IN MAY 2026. The Joint Statement records: 'At the invitation of Prime Minister of India, H.E. Shri Narendra Modi, the General Secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party of Viet Nam, President of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, H.E. Mr. To Lam, paid a State Visit to India from 05 May to 07 May 2026.' And: 'They therefore agreed to elevate the bilateral relations to Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the spirit of "shared vision, strategic convergence, substantive cooperation".' The Embassy of India, Hanoi confirms: 'India-Viet Nam relations were elevated in 2026 to ECSP during the State Visit of General Secretary and President of Viet Nam to India; earlier, the relations were designated as "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership"'.

  THE JOINT STATEMENT ITSELF IS DATED 6 MAY 2026 BY THE MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS' OWN INDEX TITLE ('...May 06, 2026'), WHILE THE VISIT IT REPORTS RAN 5-7 MAY 2026. The PIB list of outcomes for the same visit is timestamped '06 MAY 2026 3:44PM by PIB Delhi'. Both dates are recorded rather than reconciled.

• 6 May 2026

  The 2030 trade goal[6][16]

  USD 25 billion by 2030. The Joint Statement of May 2026 records: 'The leaders emphasized the need to further enhance it in a balanced and mutually beneficial manner, and agreed on a new trade goal of 25 billion USD by 2030.' Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade states the same target in its own words on 13 May 2026: 'raising bilateral trade turnover to USD 25 billion by 2030 in a more balanced and sustainable manner'.

  THIS IS THE ONLY TRADE TARGET BOTH GOVERNMENTS STATE IN IDENTICAL TERMS, AND BOTH ATTACH THE WORD 'BALANCED' TO IT. Neither source states the basis (calendar year or fiscal year), the currency deflator, or which statistical series the target will be measured against. AN EARLIER TARGET OF USD 15 BILLION IS RECORDED BY Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade in July 2022 as a goal 'set by leaders', with no date and no source; that target was passed in the fiscal year 2024-25 on Indian data and in calendar 2024 on Vietnamese data.

• 6 May 2026

  Market access agreed at leaders’ level[6]

  The May 2026 Joint Statement records reciprocal agricultural market access: 'They decided that both sides will facilitate market access, including for agricultural products in respective countries.' 'They welcomed the decision to grant market access for Indian Grapes and Vietnamese Durians.' 'They also agreed to expedite market access for Indian Pomegranates and Vietnamese Pomelos.' On pharmaceuticals the statement notes 'the potential participation of Indian companies in the procurement of medicines for Vietnamese public healthcare facilities from 2027'. On supply chains: 'Both sides agreed to enhance the supply chains in sectors of mutual interest', with Viet Nam committing 'to diversify its supply sources and to import more products from India'.

  THESE ARE PRODUCT-SPECIFIC SANITARY AND PHYTOSANITARY OPENINGS, NOT TARIFF CONCESSIONS. They operate outside AITIGA. NO EFFECTIVE DATE, NO PROTOCOL NUMBER AND NO IMPLEMENTING INSTRUMENT IS NAMED FOR ANY OF THE FOUR FRUITS in any source fetched.

Primary official sources for the agreement position: [3][11][15][1][17][18][6][19][5][20][21][22][2][7][4][10][8][9][23][24][25][16][26][27][14][28][12][13][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]

The AITIGA Review

UNDER REVIEW, NOT CONCLUDED, AND NO CONCLUSION DATE IS PUBLISHED. The most recent officially reported meeting is the 13TH MEETING OF THE AITIGA JOINT COMMITTEE, held at Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi from 6 to 10 July 2026, with the Joint Committee session itself on 7 July 2026. PIB states: 'The Joint Committee provided strategic guidance to the Sub-Committees in their respective areas of work and urged them to expedite the finalisation of the outstanding chapters under the AITIGA Review. To maintain the momentum of negotiations, the Sub-Committees were assigned time-bound deliverables and encouraged to work closely towards achieving tangible outcomes within the agreed timelines.' Three of the eight Sub-Committees met on the sidelines: Customs Procedures and Trade Facilitation (SC-CPTF), National Treatment and Market Access (SC-NTMA), and Rules of Origin (SC-ROO). Co-chaired by Shri Nitin Kumar Yadav, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, and Ms. Mastura Ahmad Mustafa, Deputy Secretary General (Trade), Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Malaysia. All ten ASEAN Member States attended. The meetings were held in hybrid format.[5]

The deadline that was set, published and missed

THE OFFICIALLY STATED DEADLINE FOR CONCLUDING THE AITIGA REVIEW WAS 2025. IT WAS MISSED, AND NO REPLACEMENT DEADLINE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED. The Department of Commerce Annual Report 2024-25 states: 'The review will target addressing injury to industries from the existing AITIGA and the inequitable tariff liberalization by all the partner countries. The review is targeted to conclude in 2025.' The same report records the aim of 'substantial conclusion of the ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) Review negotiations by 2025'. The Press Information Bureau readout of the 6th Joint Committee (23 November 2024) records agreement to 'work towards conclusion of review in 2025'. As at 19 August 2026 the review is still running: the 13th Joint Committee in July 2026 was still urging Sub-Committees to 'expedite the finalisation of the outstanding chapters'.[4][5]

The round history, reconstructed from two source families that disagree

RECONSTRUCTED FROM TWO SOURCE FAMILIES, NEITHER OF WHICH IS COMPLETE ON ITS OWN. From Government of India press releases: 3rd Joint Committee, India, 16-19 February 2024; 4th, Putrajaya, Malaysia, May 2024; 5th, Jakarta, Indonesia, July-August 2024; 6th, New Delhi, 21-22 November 2024; 8th, Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi, 7-11 April 2025; 10th, Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi, 10-14 August 2025; 13th, Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi, 6-10 July 2026. From ASEAN's own notional calendars: 7th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings, Jakarta, 11-15 February 2025; 8th AITIGA Joint Committee Meeting, India (TBC), 9-11 April 2025; 9th AITIGA Joint Committee Meeting and Related Meetings, Malaysia, 15-19 June 2025; 10th AITIGA JC Meeting and Related Meetings, India (TBC), 12-14 August 2025; 12th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings, 29 March-1 April 2026; 13th ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement Joint Committee and Related Meetings, 6-10 July 2026; 14th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings (TBC), 20-24 July 2026; 15th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings, 5-9 October 2026.[35][5][20]

ASEAN'S OWN CALENDAR CONTAINS AN UNEXPLAINED SCHEDULING ANOMALY. The 'ASEAN 2026 PUBLIC CALENDAR as of 15 July 2026' lists '14th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings (TBC)' for 20-24 July 2026 — ten days after the 13th Joint Committee ended on 10 July 2026 — and then '15th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings' for 5-9 October 2026.[35]

What the leaders have committed to, and what they have not

Both governments have twice put the AITIGA review into leader-level text without ever attaching a date. May 2026: 'The leaders agreed that the ongoing review of the ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) should be concluded at the earliest.' August 2024: both nations agreed that 'the review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement should be concluded as soon as possible'.[6][7]

Trade flows

The Vietnamese series — the only unit-precise full year in the record

Series owner: General Department of Vietnam Customs, Ministry of Finance of Viet Nam — a government agency. This is Viet Nam's own official customs return.[8]

Series publisher: General Department of Vietnam Customs — English-language statistical tables published as static PDFs on files.customs.gov.vn[8][9]

Period: Calendar year 2025 (January-December), read from the 'Year to date' column of the December 2025 reporting-month tables. Basis: Merchandise. Values in US dollars, printed to the unit. Both tables carry the header 'MINISTRY OF FINANCE OF VIETNAM / GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF CUSTOMS' and are labelled 'Preliminary'.[8][9]

Columns as printed: Country/Territory-Main exports (or Main imports) | Reporting month: Volume, Value (USD) | Year to date: Volume, Value (USD). On the country-total line the volume cells are empty, so the two numbers that appear are the reporting-month value and the year-to-date value.[8]

Viet Nam’s exports: Printed as 10,351,049,218 US dollars. The same line's reporting-month (December 2025) value is 993,634,432. THIS IS THE LARGER DIRECTION BY A WIDE MARGIN AND IS THE STRUCTURAL FACT OF THE CORRIDOR.[8]

Viet Nam’s imports: Printed as 6,112,949,670 US dollars. The same line's reporting-month (December 2025) value is 697,557,231. For continuity, the same table for December 2023 prints the India year-to-date value as 5,864,659,715 with a December-2023 month value of 450,741,024; and the April 2025 issue prints India's month value as 468,867,449 with a January-April 2025 cumulative of 1,876,420,733.[9]

Both aggregates are derived. Here are the derivations and their parents.

NEITHER CUSTOMS TABLE CARRIES A TWO-WAY TOTAL COLUMN — they are separate export and import publications. The derived total is recorded because it is independently corroborated: Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade states 2025 turnover as 'nearly USD 16.46 billion', which the derived figure of 16,463,998,888 rounds to exactly.[8][9][16]

NEITHER GOVERNMENT PUBLISHES A BALANCE OR DEFICIT FIGURE FOR THIS CORRIDOR IN ANY SOURCE FETCHED — a marked contrast with the India-Korea corridor, where India's own press releases name the deficit. The imbalance is nonetheless the corridor's defining feature: Viet Nam's exports to India are roughly 1.69 times its imports from India. The May 2026 Joint Statement addresses it only obliquely, through the leaders' insistence that trade grow 'in a balanced and mutually beneficial manner'.[8][9][6]

The same series in the trade ministry’s own words

Series owner: Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam (MOIT) — Viet Nam's trade ministry, a government body.. Period: Calendar year 2025, with a first-quarter 2026 partial and a 2016 comparator. Basis: Merchandise turnover, US dollars, stated in rounded billions in ministry news items. NOT A TABULATED SERIES — these are figures embedded in ministry articles.[16][25]

• Total turnover, calendar 2025[16]

  nearly USD 16.46 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.6%

  Recorded as printed, including the word 'nearly'. Reconciles to the unit with the Viet Nam Customs derived total of 16,463,998,888.

• Viet Nam’s exports to India, calendar 2025[16]

  USD 10.3 billion, up 14.2% compared to the previous year

  Rounded to one decimal place. The Customs table gives 10,351,049,218 for the same period and direction.

• A ten-year endpoint pair[25]

  2016: 'USD 5.43 billion'. 2025: 'USD 16.46 billion'.

  A TEN-YEAR ENDPOINT PAIR, NOT A YEAR-BY-YEAR SERIES. NO INTERMEDIATE YEARS ARE PUBLISHED IN THIS SOURCE. Note the coincidence that the 2016 total, USD 5.43 billion, is numerically identical to the Embassy of India, Hanoi's figure for India's exports to Viet Nam in fiscal 2024-25. These are unrelated measurements and MUST NOT BE CONFLATED.

• The most recent period published anywhere[25]

  USD 4.8 billion in the first three months of 2026, up 28% year-on-year

  PARTIAL PERIOD. NOT A FULL YEAR AND NOT COMPARABLE TO ANY ANNUAL FIGURE IN THIS FILE. No direction split is given. No later 2026 period is published by any official source fetched, so the corridor's 2026 outturn is UNKNOWN at the date of access.

• Partner rankings, and the rank the two governments disagree on[25][15]

  'India is Vietnam's 8th largest trading partner' and 'Vietnam is India's 21st largest partner and the 4th largest within ASEAN'.

  CONFLICTS WITH THE INDIAN MISSION. The Embassy of India, Hanoi states that 'Vietnam ranks as India's 20th largest trading partner and 15th export destination; India is Vietnam's 8th largest trading partner'. The two sides agree that India is Viet Nam's 8th largest partner and DISAGREE ON VIET NAM'S RANK IN INDIA'S TRADE — 21st per MOIT, 20th per the Indian mission. Neither states the period or series the rank is computed on. Both are recorded; neither is preferred.

The Indian government series — absent, and why

NOT OBTAINED

The page was reached and its metadata read: the country dropdown includes 'VIETNAM SOC REP'; fiscal years 2018-2019 through 2025-2026 are offered; currency options are 'US $ Million' and 'Rs Crore'; the page states 'Data available 2017-2018 to 2025-2026' and 'Last data updated on 07/08/2026'; the source is stated as 'Metadata on DGCI&S'. THE FIGURES REQUIRE A FORM SUBMISSION WHICH COULD NOT BE PERFORMED, and the page returned 'No Result found'. NO INDIAN FISCAL-YEAR TRADE SERIES FOR VIET NAM IS RECORDED IN THIS FILE. THIS IS A REFUSAL, NOT AN ABSENCE: the data demonstrably exists, covers the corridor, and is current to 7 August 2026 — eleven days before the date of access.[10]

Source as the registry records it: Department of Commerce, Government of India — TRADESTAT export-import databank, country-wise total trade page[10]

What stands in for the Indian side, and the label that does not match its data

• Indian fiscal 2024-25, self-attributed to Indian data[11]

  'According to the Indian data for the year April 2024 - March 2025, bilateral trade reached US$ 15.76 billion, registering an increase of 6.40 percent year on year.' India's exports US$ 5.43 billion (down 0.75%); India's imports US$ 10.33 billion (up 10.59%).

  SELF-ATTRIBUTED TO 'THE INDIAN DATA' AND ON THE INDIAN FISCAL YEAR. Components sum exactly: 5.43 + 10.33 = 15.76. THIS IS THE ONLY FIGURE IN THIS FILE THAT IS BOTH EXPLICITLY INDIAN-SOURCED AND ON AN INDIAN PERIOD. It is rounded to two decimal places and no underlying table is published. NO INDIAN FISCAL YEAR 2025-26 FIGURE ATTRIBUTED TO INDIAN DATA EXISTS IN ANY SOURCE FETCHED.

• Calendar 2024, expressly attributed by the mission to Vietnamese figures[11][1]

  'From a meagre US$200 million in the year 2000, according to Vietnamese figure, bilateral trade grew to US$ 14.89 billion in 2024.' The companion page gives the 2024 split as India's exports US$ 5.83 billion and India's imports US$ 9.06 billion.

  EXPLICITLY ATTRIBUTED BY THE INDIAN MISSION TO 'VIETNAMESE FIGURE' AND ON THE CALENDAR YEAR. Components sum exactly: 5.83 + 9.06 = 14.89. This is Vietnamese data republished by an Indian mission and MUST NOT be read as an Indian series. The year-2000 comparator of US$200 million carries no source of its own.

• The figures printed under the heading 2025-2026[15]

  'In 2025-2026, India-Viet Nam bilateral trade crossed USD 16 billion'; 'India's export to Viet Nam accounted to approx. USD 6.11 billion'; 'Viet Nam's exports to India were approx. USD 10.35 billion'.

  THESE FIGURES ARE PRESENTED UNDER AN INDIAN FISCAL-YEAR LABEL BUT MATCH THE VIETNAMESE CALENDAR-2025 CUSTOMS RETURN TO TWO DECIMAL PLACES. See 'the period-label defect recorded below'. THE FIGURES ARE RECORDED HERE AS THE MISSION PRINTS THEM, WITH THE DEFECT FLAGGED, NOT SILENTLY RELABELLED.

The period-label conflict, recorded and not adjudicated

Two readings of the same three numbers survive the evidence. The registry sets both out, states exactly what is established and what is not, and does not choose between them. Nothing on this page treats either reading as settled.

CONFLICT, AND THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL DEFECT IN THIS FILE. The Embassy of India, Hanoi presents figures under the heading '2025-2026' — which on every other page of the same mission means the Indian fiscal year April to March — that reproduce Viet Nam's CALENDAR 2025 customs return. The mission's 'approx. USD 6.11 billion' for India's exports sits against Viet Nam Customs Table 20B/TCHQ's calendar-2025 India total of 6,112,949,670, which rounds to 6.11. The mission's 'approx. USD 10.35 billion' for Viet Nam's exports sits against Table 19B/TCHQ's calendar-2025 India total of 10,351,049,218, which rounds to 10.35. The mission's 'crossed USD 16 billion' sits against the derived calendar-2025 total of 16,463,998,888.[15][8][9]

Two growth claims that are not statistics

'Our bilateral trade has increased by more than 85 percent' (Prime Minister of India, 1 August 2024). 'two-way trade doubling over the past decade' (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam Le Hoai Trung, 18 August 2026).[7][14]

Investment

• India into Viet Nam — the Indian mission’s figures[11]

  'estimated at around US$ 2 billion' across energy, agro-processing and technology, with '432 valid FDI projects with total registered investment of US$ 1,095.33 million'.

  TWO DIFFERENT MAGNITUDES ON ONE PAGE: an 'estimated' USD 2 billion stock and a registered-capital figure less than half that. The mission does not reconcile them or state the as-of date of the 432-project count. An MEA brief dated 22 November 2022 gave 'around US$ 1.9 billion'.

• India into Viet Nam — Viet Nam’s trade ministry’s figures[25]

  '503 valid projects in Vietnam with total registered capital of nearly USD 1.12 billion' as of March 2026.

  CONFLICTS WITH THE INDIAN MISSION ON BOTH COUNT AND CAPITAL: 503 projects / USD 1.12 billion (Viet Nam, March 2026) against 432 projects / USD 1,095.33 million (India, undated). The as-of dates differ, which may explain the project count but does not explain why registered capital rose only 2 per cent while the project count rose 16 per cent. NEITHER GOVERNMENT RECONCILES THE TWO.

• Viet Nam into India — realised stock against announced intent[11][25]

  Embassy of India, Hanoi: Viet Nam's investments in India 'US$12.69 million', plus VinFast's 'US$ 500 million' electric-vehicle plant noted separately. Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam: 'Vingroup and VinFast have announced investment plans in India with a total expected capital of nearly USD 10 billion'.

  A TWENTY-FOLD DISCREPANCY IN FRAMING. India records realised Vietnamese investment of USD 12.69 million and a separate USD 500 million VinFast commitment; Viet Nam records 'announced investment plans' of 'nearly USD 10 billion'. THESE MEASURE DIFFERENT THINGS — realised stock against announced intent — AND NEITHER SOURCE SAYS SO. An MEA brief dated 22 November 2022 recorded 'six investment projects' totalling 'US$ 28.55 million', which is LARGER than the mission's current USD 12.69 million figure; NO SOURCE EXPLAINS THE DECLINE.

Top goods, each direction

Every valued commodity line on this page is Vietnamese. No Indian source publishes a commodity value for this corridor at all. The ordering of the two valued tables is the registry’s own, by value: the source prints its lines in a fixed nomenclature sequence and ranks nothing.

Volume lines as printed: The 'Other base metals' line is one of the few carrying a volume: Ton, 37,285 in the reporting month and 294,972 year to date.[9]

The Indian mission’s lists — names only

• India’s exports to Viet Nam — Fiscal year April 2024 - March 2025, per the page's surrounding text[11]

  frozen bovine meat; fishery products; machinery and equipment; electrical equipment; auto component; pharmaceutical and API; chemicals; ordinary metals; cereal; cotton; animal fodder; gems & jewellery

  NO VALUES, NO SHARES AND NO HS CODES ARE PUBLISHED — weaker than the Vietnamese customs tables on every dimension. The list is reproduced in the order printed; whether that order is by value is NOT STATED. Cross-reading against Viet Nam Customs Table 20B/TCHQ shows material divergence: the mission names 'frozen bovine meat' first while the Vietnamese table's largest India line is 'Other base metals' at USD 819.5 million, and the mission omits base metals entirely from its leading items. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE RECONCILES THE TWO LISTS.

• India’s imports from Viet Nam — Fiscal year April 2024 - March 2025, per the page's surrounding text[11]

  electronic equipment; telecom equipment; machinery and mechanical appliances; iron and steel; ordinary metals; chemicals; article of plastic; products of steel; footwear; garment; textile materials; wood; rubber; coffee

  NO VALUES AND NO SHARES. This list is broadly consistent in composition with Viet Nam Customs Table 19B/TCHQ — electronics, telecom, machinery and steel lead both — but carries no magnitudes, so it cannot corroborate the Vietnamese values, only echo their ordering.

• A ministry priority list, which is not a measurement[16]

  textiles and garments; footwear; seafood; agricultural products; wood products; supporting industries; green transition

  THIS IS A LIST OF THE VIETNAM TRADE OFFICE'S PRIORITY SECTORS FOR THE INDIAN MARKET, NOT A MEASUREMENT OF WHAT IS TRADED. It is recorded separately from the customs tables and MUST NOT be read as a top-goods list. Minister Le Manh Hung separately highlighted 'developing a Vietnam - India supply chain in the textile and footwear industries'.

Mechanics and open issues

Two things sit side by side in this section and the registry keeps them apart. One is the origin and certification machinery of the plurilateral agreement, which is complete on the Indian side and empty on the Vietnamese side. The other is India’s trade-defence file against Viet Nam, recorded case by case with dates and the exact status of each — final findings are recommendations to the Central Government, not the operative levy, and no duty actually in force is established anywhere on this page.

• Rules of origin under AITIGA — the general rule[3]

  Rule 4 of the AITIGA rules of origin sets the substantive test for goods not wholly obtained. A product qualifies as originating where two conditions are met together: 'the AIFTA content is not less than 35 per cent of the FOB value' and 'the non-originating materials have undergone at least a change in tariff sub-heading'. The regional value content may be computed by either a direct or an indirect method, and each Party may select which method it applies.

  35 PER CENT AIFTA CONTENT OF FOB VALUE PLUS A CHANGE IN TARIFF SUB-HEADING, AND THE TWO ARE CUMULATIVE, NOT ALTERNATIVE. This is the twin-criterion structure that distinguishes AITIGA from the India-Korea CEPA, where the equivalent Article 3.4 offers product-specific rules OR a 35 per cent regional value content with change of sub-heading as ALTERNATIVE routes. THE ACRONYM IN THE ORIGIN RULES IS 'AIFTA', NOT 'AITIGA'. THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON RULES OF ORIGIN (SC-ROO) IS ONE OF THE THREE THAT MET AT THE 13TH JOINT COMMITTEE IN JULY 2026, SO THESE RULES ARE THEMSELVES UNDER ACTIVE RENEGOTIATION AND THE TEXT ABOVE IS THE RULE IN FORCE, NOT THE RULE BEING NEGOTIATED.

  Source organisation: ASEAN Secretariat — AITIGA treaty text, rules of origin, Rule 4

• Rules of origin — wholly obtained route[3]

  The rules provide two routes to originating status: goods wholly obtained or produced in the territory of the exporting Party, and goods satisfying the Rule 4 test above.

  RECORDED AT THE LEVEL OF DETAIL THE FETCHED TEXT SUPPORTS. The product-specific rules annex and the operational certification procedures were NOT read in full in this pass and are recorded as a gap.

  Source organisation: ASEAN Secretariat — AITIGA treaty text, rules of origin

• Certificate of origin — issuing agencies on the Indian side[13]

  For the Indo-ASEAN agreement, DGFT lists three agencies authorised to issue preferential certificates of origin: '1. Export Inspection Council (EIC)-for all goods 2. Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) -for Marine products 3. Textile Committee- Textile and made ups'. Applications are filed through the Common Digital Platform at https://coo.dgft.gov.in/ following a six-step process: register and log in, access the dashboard, submit an online application, complete the form and attach the invoice. Required supporting documents are the IEC, the RCMC and the invoice.

  THE DGFT PROCESS DOCUMENT CARRIES NO PUBLICATION OR REVISION DATE, so its currency cannot be established. IT DOES NOT NAME THE CERTIFICATE FORM CODE for the ASEAN-India agreement; the treaty's own form designation was not read in this pass. NO VIETNAMESE-SIDE ISSUING AGENCY IS RECORDED — the equivalent Vietnamese authority for issuing AIFTA certificates was NOT OBTAINED from any Vietnamese government source in this pass.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Government of India — 'Process for Certificate of Origin for India's FTAs and PTAs'

• DGFT listing of the agreement and its coverage of Viet Nam[12]

  DGFT's Appendix 2A, 'List of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) / Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) signed by India', lists the agreement as 'India - ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement' and enumerates its member countries as 'Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam'. Vietnam is expressly among them.

  THIS IS THE FORMAL INDIAN REGULATORY CONFIRMATION THAT VIET NAM'S PREFERENTIAL ACCESS TO INDIA RUNS THROUGH THE ASEAN INSTRUMENT AND NOTHING ELSE. THE APPENDIX AS FETCHED IS THE VERSION 'updated as on 30.08.2022' — NEARLY FOUR YEARS STALE at the date of access, and predating every FTA India concluded from 2024 onward. It is cited only for the AITIGA membership list, which has not changed.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Government of India — Appendix 2A

• Anti-dumping — hot rolled flat products of steel from Viet Nam[30]

  Case AD (OI)-13/2024. Product under consideration: 'Hot rolled flat products of alloy or non-alloy steel, not clad, not plated or coated, of a thickness upto 25 mm and width upto 2100 mm'. Sole subject country: Vietnam. Applicants: JSW Steel Limited and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India Limited, through the Indian Steel Association. Final findings dated 13 August 2025. The Authority recorded the import surge: 'From a level of 940 MT in 2021-22, the imports of subject goods from subject country increased to 662,866 MT during the POI(A).' Dumping margins were determined in a 0-10 per cent range for Hoa Phat Dung Quat Steel JSC and a 20-30 per cent range for all others. The Authority rejected requests for product exclusions on the ground that such restrictions could facilitate circumvention through minor modifications.

  THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL TRADE-DEFENCE ACTION IN THE CORRIDOR AND VIET NAM IS THE ONLY SUBJECT COUNTRY. The import volume increase recorded by the Authority is roughly 705-fold over the period cited. THE DUTY RATES ARE RECORDED AS BANDS BECAUSE BANDS ARE WHAT THE NON-CONFIDENTIAL VERSION PRINTS; individual company rates are redacted. WHETHER THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT SUBSEQUENTLY IMPOSED THE RECOMMENDED DUTY BY CUSTOMS NOTIFICATION WAS NOT ESTABLISHED IN THIS PASS — the final findings are a recommendation to the Central Government, not the operative levy.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — final findings, 13 August 2025

• Countervailing duty — calcium carbonate filler masterbatch from Viet Nam[31]

  Case CVD(OI)-03/2024. Product under consideration: 'Calcium Carbonate Filler Masterbatch' also known as 'Filler Masterbatch' or 'Calcium Carbonate Compound' wherein calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is the major constituent, i.e. more than 50% by volume. Sole subject country: Vietnam. Final findings dated 24 June 2026. The findings examine multiple countervailable subsidy schemes identified in Vietnam and determine their specificity and benefit calculations.

  THIS IS A SUBSIDY CASE, NOT A DUMPING CASE, AND IT IS THE MOST RECENT COMPLETED TRADE-DEFENCE ACTION AGAINST VIET NAM IN THIS FILE — concluded seven weeks after the leaders signed the Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. A countervailing action asserts that the Vietnamese state subsidised the exports, which is a materially different and politically sharper allegation than dumping by firms. THE SUBSIDY MARGIN TABLE IS REFERENCED IN THE DOCUMENT'S CONTENTS AT PAGE 90 BUT THE OPERATIVE DUTY RATE WAS NOT READ IN THIS PASS — recorded as a gap.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — final findings, 24 June 2026

• Anti-dumping — welded stainless steel pipes and tubes[32]

  Case 6/28/2023-DGTR. Product: Welded Stainless-Steel Pipes and Tubes. Subject countries: Thailand and Vietnam. Initiation notification 30/09/2023. Final findings 06/08/2024. Status: concluded. Intervening documents on record: final PCN methodology and questionnaire guidance 15/04/2024; registered interested parties and non-confidential submissions 21/05/2024; notice for oral hearing 27/05/2024; rescheduling notice 07/06/2024.

  CONCLUDED. THE RECOMMENDED DUTY RATE WAS NOT READ IN THIS PASS. Viet Nam is one of two subject countries, so any duty is not Viet Nam-specific in scope.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

• Anti-dumping — viscose spun yarn[33]

  Case 6/41/2019-DGTR. Product: Viscose Spun Yarn. Subject countries: China PR, Indonesia and Vietnam. Initiation 14/01/2020. Final findings 31/12/2020. Office Memorandum-TRU 06/04/2021. Status: concluded.

  THE OLDEST COMPLETED VIET NAM CASE RECORDED HERE. Included to establish that Indian trade-defence action against Viet Nam predates the current trade surge rather than responding only to it. Yarn is also an Indian export line to Viet Nam — Viet Nam Customs records USD 140.8 million of Indian yarn imports in calendar 2025 — so the corridor runs trade defence and trade in the same product family in opposite directions. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE DRAWS THAT CONNECTION.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

• Anti-dumping — cold rolled flat products of stainless steel (ONGOING)[34]

  'Anti-dumping Investigation concerning imports of Cold rolled Flat Products of Stainless Steel 300 and 400 Series' involving 'China PR., Indonesia and Vietnam', with an oral hearing scheduled for 11 September 2026.

  THIS INVESTIGATION IS LIVE AT THE DATE OF ACCESS, WITH ITS ORAL HEARING STILL THREE WEEKS IN THE FUTURE. Viet Nam is one of three subject countries. NO FINDING EXISTS YET AND NONE IS ASSERTED HERE. A separate, broader stainless steel flat-rolled case listing Vietnam among fifteen subject countries also appears in DGTR's case index; its status was not established in this pass.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — current case listings

• Viet Nam's own characterisation of Indian trade barriers[16]

  Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade states that the 'Indian market continues to present a number of challenges, including protectionist policies with high import tariffs, the growing use of trade defense measures, increasingly stringent traceability requirements'. The Minister of Industry and Trade directed the Vietnam Trade Office in India to make proposals to Ministry leadership 'particularly regarding trade barriers and the progress of negotiations to upgrade the ASEAN - India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA)'.

  THIS IS THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT NAMING INDIAN TRADE DEFENCE AS A PROBLEM, IN ITS OWN WORDS, SIX DAYS AFTER THE ENHANCED COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WAS SIGNED. It is the counterpart to the DGTR actions recorded above and the sharpest divergence in this file between the leader-level language and the ministry-level language. NOTE ALSO THE VERB: MOIT calls the AITIGA process an 'upgrade' negotiation, while India's Department of Commerce and PIB consistently call it a 'review'. NO SOURCE RECONCILES THE TWO TERMS.

  Source organisation: Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam — 13 May 2026

• AITIGA review — what the review is officially FOR[4]

  The Department of Commerce states the objective in its own words: 'The review will target addressing injury to industries from the existing AITIGA and the inequitable tariff liberalization by all the partner countries.'

  THIS IS THE INDIAN NEGOTIATING PREMISE STATED BLUNTLY BY THE DEPARTMENT ITSELF: the existing agreement causes 'injury' to Indian industry and liberalisation under it has been 'inequitable'. It sits directly against Viet Nam's characterisation of India as protectionist. BOTH ARE OFFICIAL AND THEY ARE IRRECONCILABLE AS STATED. This is the substantive reason the review has run past its own deadline, though NO OFFICIAL SOURCE SAYS SO.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Department of Commerce — Annual Report 2024-25

• AITIGA sub-committee architecture[20]

  Eight sub-committees sit under the AITIGA Joint Committee. Named across Indian press releases: Customs Procedures and Trade Facilitation (SC-CPTF); Legal and Institutional Issues (SC-LII); National Treatment and Market Access (SC-NTMA); Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SC-SPS); Rules of Origin (SC-ROO); Standards, Technical Regulations and Conformity Assessment (SC-STRACAP); Trade Remedies (SC-TR); and Economic and Technical Cooperation (SC-ETC). Seven of the eight met alongside the 10th Joint Committee in August 2025; only three met alongside the 13th in July 2026 — SC-CPTF, SC-NTMA and SC-ROO.

  THE NARROWING FROM SEVEN SUB-COMMITTEES TO THREE BETWEEN AUGUST 2025 AND JULY 2026 IS RECORDED AS PRINTED. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE EXPLAINS IT, and it admits opposite readings — convergence onto the last open files, or collapse of the wider agenda. THE REGISTRY DOES NOT CHOOSE. The three that still meet are the market access, origin and customs chapters, which are the commercially operative ones.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau — Release ID 2156828 (15 August 2025) and Release ID 2282336 (8 July 2026)

Logistics

The air side of this corridor is comparatively well documented — carriers, city pairs and weekly frequencies are all published, and the two governments disagree about the frequency in the same month. The sea side, which carries the trade, is not documented at all: no source on either side names a container service, a shipping line, a port pair or a sailing frequency.

• Direct air links — Indian official count, May 2026[15]

  'Currently, there are around 90 direct flights operating every week between cities of India and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.'

  APPROXIMATE AND WEEKLY. Names only two Vietnamese endpoints, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and no Indian cities.

  Source organisation: Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Bilateral Relations' page, document date May 2026

• Direct air links — Vietnamese official count, May 2026 (CONFLICTS WITH THE INDIAN COUNT)[25]

  'From having no direct flights in 2016, the two countries now operate nearly 100 flights per week, with nearly 800,000 Indian visitors to Vietnam in 2025.'

  DIRECT CONFLICT, SAME MONTH. India says 'around 90' weekly flights; Viet Nam says 'nearly 100'. Both are dated May 2026 and neither cites a source, a carrier list or a schedule. The gap is about ten flights a week, roughly 11 per cent. BOTH ARE RECORDED; NEITHER IS PREFERRED. Viet Nam additionally dates the start of direct services to after 2016, which India's own sources do not contradict but do not confirm either.

  Source organisation: Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam — 6 May 2026

• Direct air links — route and carrier detail, August 2025[1]

  'Direct flights by Indigo, Viet Nam Airlines, Vietjet Air and Air India connect seven cities in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Kochi) with Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang in Viet Nam'.

  THE ONLY SOURCE THAT NAMES CARRIERS AND CITY PAIRS, AND IT IS A YEAR OLD. Four carriers, seven Indian cities, three Vietnamese cities. NOTE THE GROWTH TRAJECTORY ACROSS DATED OFFICIAL SOURCES: an MEA brief of 22 November 2022 described direct flights connecting 'four citifies on both sides' including Delhi, Mumbai, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City; the Prime Minister of India stated on 1 August 2024 that over 50 direct flights operate; August 2025 gives seven Indian cities; May 2026 gives around 90 to 100 weekly. NO SINGLE SOURCE PRESENTS THIS AS A SERIES and the units differ between them — city counts against weekly frequencies — so they are NOT COMPARABLE without care.

  Source organisation: Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Bilateral Relations' page marked '[As on August 2025]'

• Air Services Agreement[17]

  Air Services Agreement dated 20.05.1993, modified 27.01.2023. Related instruments listed: MoU between Vietnam Airlines and Jet Airways (12.10.2011); MoU between Vietnam Airlines and Jet Airways on Direct Air Services (15.10.2014); MoU between Air India and Vietjet Aviation (09.12.2016).

  THE 2023 MODIFICATION IS THE LEGAL BASIS FOR THE CAPACITY GROWTH DESCRIBED ABOVE, THOUGH NO OFFICIAL SOURCE FETCHED SAYS SO. The compilation carries no publication date of its own, so its currency cannot be established. Two of the three carrier MoUs name Jet Airways, which ceased operations in 2019; the list appears not to have been pruned.

  Source organisation: Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Compilation of List of Agreements/Treaties & MoUs between India and Vietnam'

• Civil aviation — the only forward commitment[6]

  'Welcoming the increase in direct flights between the two countries, they encouraged their civil aviation authorities to discuss enhancing air connectivity.'

  THE COMMITMENT IS TO DISCUSS, NOT TO DO. NO TARGET FREQUENCY, NO NEW ROUTE, NO NEW CITY PAIR AND NO DATE IS NAMED. This is the highest-level aviation language on record in the corridor.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau — Joint Statement on Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Release ID 2258431

• Maritime shipping agreements[17]

  'Maritime Shipping Agreement' dated 24.05.2013 and a second entry titled 'Maritime Shipping Agreement' dated 12.07.2013. Also listed: 'White Shipping Agreement between Indian Navy and Vietnam People's Navy' (03.09.2016) and 'MoU on Mutual Logistics Support' (08.06.2022).

  THE COMPILATION LISTS THE MARITIME SHIPPING AGREEMENT TWICE, UNDER IDENTICAL TITLES, WITH TWO DIFFERENT 2013 DATES SEVEN WEEKS APART. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE RESOLVES WHICH IS THE OPERATIVE INSTRUMENT, or whether one is a signature date and the other an entry-into-force or ratification date. Recorded as printed. NOTE ALSO THAT 'WHITE SHIPPING' AND 'MUTUAL LOGISTICS SUPPORT' ARE NAVAL AND DEFENCE INSTRUMENTS, NOT COMMERCIAL SHIPPING ARRANGEMENTS, and must not be read as trade logistics.

  Source organisation: Embassy of India, Hanoi — compilation of agreements

• Direct commercial shipping services — NOT ESTABLISHED[6]

  NO OFFICIAL SOURCE FETCHED NAMES A DIRECT CONTAINER SERVICE, A SHIPPING LINE, A PORT PAIR OR A SAILING FREQUENCY BETWEEN INDIA AND VIET NAM. The May 2026 Joint Statement's maritime content is thematic rather than operational: 'India and Viet Nam are maritime countries with a millennia-old history of exchanges'; 'enhanced maritime cooperation between the two sides'; agreement 'to enhance collaboration in oceanography, including areas such as ocean observing platforms, data management, ocean prediction'; and reaffirmation of 'the importance of maintaining peace, stability, security and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea'.

  THIS IS A REFUSAL TO ASSERT, NOT A FINDING OF ABSENCE. Some 16.5 billion dollars of goods moved between these two countries in calendar 2025, overwhelmingly by sea, yet NOT ONE OFFICIAL SOURCE ON EITHER SIDE DESCRIBES THE SEA LINK THAT CARRIED IT. Searches across Indian and Vietnamese government domains for a direct shipping route, port pair or container service returned nothing operational. THE SINGLE LARGEST PHYSICAL FACT ABOUT THIS CORRIDOR IS UNDOCUMENTED IN THE OFFICIAL RECORD FETCHED.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau — Joint Statement, Release ID 2258431

• Supply chain language[6]

  'Both sides agreed to enhance the supply chains in sectors of mutual interest', with Viet Nam committing 'to diversify its supply sources and to import more products from India'. Viet Nam's Minister of Industry and Trade separately highlighted 'developing a Vietnam - India supply chain in the textile and footwear industries'.

  THE VIETNAMESE COMMITMENT 'TO IMPORT MORE PRODUCTS FROM INDIA' IS THE ONLY DIRECTIONAL REBALANCING PLEDGE IN THE OFFICIAL RECORD, and it is one-sided: Viet Nam runs the surplus and it is Viet Nam that undertakes to buy more. NO VOLUME, NO SECTOR LIST AND NO DATE IS ATTACHED.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau — Joint Statement, Release ID 2258431; Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam, 13 May 2026

• Customs cooperation[17]

  'MoU for Cooperation in Customs Capacity Building' dated 31.07.2024.

  THE ONLY CUSTOMS INSTRUMENT IN THE BILATERAL RECORD, AND IT IS A CAPACITY-BUILDING MOU, NOT A MUTUAL ASSISTANCE OR MUTUAL RECOGNITION AGREEMENT. Signed the day before the 1 August 2024 Plan of Action. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE DESCRIBES ITS CONTENT.

  Source organisation: Embassy of India, Hanoi — compilation of agreements

• Payments and financial rails[19]

  MoU between the Reserve Bank of India and the State Bank of Vietnam on cooperation in payment systems and innovation in digital payments, and MoU between NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) and the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) on cross-border payments, both signed during the May 2026 State Visit. The Prime Minister of India had stated on 1 August 2024 that 'An agreement has been reached between our central banks for Digital payment connectivity'.

  SETTLEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE, NOT TRADE FINANCE. NO LOCAL-CURRENCY SETTLEMENT ARRANGEMENT FOR MERCHANDISE TRADE IS RECORDED IN ANY SOURCE FETCHED, and no rupee-dong mechanism is named. The 2024 central bank statement and the 2026 RBI-SBV MoU appear to describe the same workstream two years apart; NO SOURCE SAYS WHETHER THE 2026 MOU SUPERSEDES OR IMPLEMENTS THE 2024 AGREEMENT.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau — 'List of Outcomes: State Visit of President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to India', 6 May 2026 (Release ID 2258363)

Developments 2024–26

Two entries in this sequence sit seven weeks apart and are recorded in the registry’s neutral voice, each as what its own government published on its own date: Viet Nam’s trade ministry naming Indian trade barriers on 13 May 2026, and India’s trade-remedies authority issuing countervailing final findings against Viet Nam on 24 June 2026. The registry states both and adjudicates neither.

• 1 August 2024

  Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Viet Nam visits India; new Plan of Action adopted[7]

  Press statement by the Prime Minister of India records adoption of 'a new Plan of Action' covering defence, security, green economy, emerging technology, energy, port development, agriculture and fisheries; approval of a USD 300 million credit line to strengthen Viet Nam's maritime security; a central bank agreement 'for Digital payment connectivity'; the claim that 'Our bilateral trade has increased by more than 85 percent'; over 50 direct flights operating; and agreement that 'the review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement should be concluded as soon as possible'.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2040103

• 23 November 2024

  6th AITIGA Joint Committee meets in New Delhi and commits to concluding the review in 2025[22]

  Met over two days, 21-22 November 2024, at Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi. Eight sub-committees covering market access, rules of origin, SPS measures, standards and technical regulations, customs procedures, economic and technical cooperation, trade remedies, and legal and institutional provisions. The committee agreed to 'work towards conclusion of review in 2025'. India-ASEAN bilateral trade in 2023-24 stated as USD 121 billion, and USD 73 billion during April-October 2024 with 5.2 per cent growth; ASEAN holds 'about 11% share in India's global trade'. Next meeting scheduled February 2025 in Jakarta.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2076227

• 11 April 2025

  8th AITIGA Joint Committee meets in New Delhi[21]

  Held 7-11 April 2025 at Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi. Co-chaired for India by Shri Rajesh Agrawal, with Deputy Co-Chair Dr. Sugumari S. Shanmugam, Senior Director, Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Malaysia. Sub-committees meeting: SC-CPTF, SC-ETC, SC-NTMA, SC-SPS and SC-ROO. India-ASEAN trade in fiscal 2023-24 stated as USD 121 billion. Next meeting stated as June 2025 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. NO TARGET DATE FOR CONCLUDING THE REVIEW APPEARS IN THIS RELEASE.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2121030

• 13 August 2025

  India recommends anti-dumping duty on hot rolled flat steel from Viet Nam[30]

  Final findings in case AD (OI)-13/2024, with Vietnam as sole subject country. The Authority recorded that imports of the subject goods from Viet Nam rose 'From a level of 940 MT in 2021-22' to '662,866 MT during the POI(A)'. Dumping margins determined in a 0-10 per cent range for Hoa Phat Dung Quat Steel JSC and 20-30 per cent for all others. Product exclusion requests rejected on circumvention grounds.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

• 15 August 2025

  10th AITIGA Joint Committee meets in New Delhi with seven of eight sub-committees[20]

  Held 10-14 August 2025 at Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi. Co-chaired by Shri Nitin Kumar Yadav, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, and Ms. Mastura Ahmad Mustafa, Deputy Secretary General, Malaysia. Seven of eight sub-committees met: SC-CPTF, SC-LII, SC-NTMA, SC-SPS, SC-ROO, SC-STRACAP and SC-TR. India-ASEAN bilateral trade stated as 'USD 123 billion in 2024-25'. Next meeting 6-7 October 2025 at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia. NO COMPLETION DATE STATED.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2156828

• 15 January 2026

  ASEAN caucus convenes ahead of the 12th AITIGA Joint Committee[35]

  ASEAN's 2026 public calendar records an 'ASEAN Caucus for the 12th Meeting of the Joint Committee of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA JC)' on 15 January 2026, preceded by caucuses for the 9th SC-ROO meeting (12-13 January 2026) and the 11th SC-NTMA meeting (14 January 2026).

  Source organisation: ASEAN Secretariat — ASEAN 2026 Public Calendar as of 15 July 2026

• 6 March 2026

  India's official FTA stocktake for 2025-26 omits Viet Nam entirely[2]

  PIB release 'India's achievements in Free Trade Agreements for the year 2025-26' enumerates nine FTAs covering 38 countries: India-Mauritius (2021), India-UAE CEPA (May 2022), India-Australia ECTA (December 2022), EFTA TEPA (signed 10 March 2024, in force 1 October 2025), India-UK CETA (July 2025), India-Oman CEPA (December 2025), India-New Zealand FTA (announced 22 December 2025), India-EU FTA (27 January 2026) and a United States framework for an interim agreement (7 February 2026). Neither Viet Nam, ASEAN nor AITIGA is mentioned anywhere in the release.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2236134

• 1 April 2026

  12th AITIGA Joint Committee and related meetings held[35]

  ASEAN's 2026 public calendar records '12th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings' for 29 March to 1 April 2026. NO READOUT OF THIS MEETING WAS LOCATED ON ANY GOVERNMENT SOURCE, Indian or Vietnamese, and the entry is recorded from the calendar alone.

  Source organisation: ASEAN Secretariat — ASEAN 2026 Public Calendar as of 15 July 2026

• 6 May 2026

  India and Viet Nam elevate ties to Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and set a USD 25 billion trade goal for 2030[6]

  General Secretary and President To Lam paid a State Visit to India from 5 to 7 May 2026. The leaders 'agreed to elevate the bilateral relations to Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the spirit of "shared vision, strategic convergence, substantive cooperation"' and 'agreed on a new trade goal of 25 billion USD by 2030'. They welcomed market access for Indian grapes and Vietnamese durians and agreed to expedite it for Indian pomegranates and Vietnamese pomelos; agreed that the AITIGA review 'should be concluded at the earliest'; encouraged civil aviation authorities to discuss enhancing air connectivity; and noted potential Indian participation in Vietnamese public medicine procurement from 2027. Thirteen instruments were signed, including an MoU between IREL (India) Limited and Viet Nam's Institute for Technology of Radioactive and Rare Elements on rare earths, an RBI-State Bank of Vietnam payments MoU, an NPCI International-NAPAS cross-border payments MoU, a CDSCO-Drug Administration of Vietnam MoU, a Cultural Exchange Programme 2026-30, a tourism MoU, a Comptroller and Auditor General-State Audit Office MoU, a MeitY-Ministry of Science and Technology digital technologies MoU, and a Mumbai-Ho Chi Minh City friendship MoU.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release IDs 2258431 and 2258363

• 6 May 2026

  Viet Nam's trade ministry publishes its own account of the corridor[25]

  MOIT article 'Vietnam - India: Expanding economic and trade cooperation in a new phase', interviewing Bui Trung Thuong, Trade Counsellor and Head of the Vietnam Trade Office in India. Trade turnover stated as USD 5.43 billion in 2016 and USD 16.46 billion in 2025, with USD 4.8 billion in the first three months of 2026, up 28 per cent year on year. India stated to be Viet Nam's 8th largest trading partner and Viet Nam India's 21st largest and 4th largest within ASEAN. India's projects in Viet Nam as of March 2026: '503 valid projects...with total registered capital of nearly USD 1.12 billion'. Vingroup and VinFast investment plans in India 'with a total expected capital of nearly USD 10 billion'. 'From having no direct flights in 2016, the two countries now operate nearly 100 flights per week, with nearly 800,000 Indian visitors to Vietnam in 2025.'

  Source organisation: Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam

• 13 May 2026

  Viet Nam's Minister of Industry and Trade names Indian trade barriers six days after the ECSP[16]

  Minister Le Manh Hung worked with the Vietnam Trade Office in India. 2025 turnover stated as 'nearly USD 16.46 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.6%', with Viet Nam's exports to India 'USD 10.3 billion, up 14.2% compared to the previous year'. The 2030 goal restated as 'raising bilateral trade turnover to USD 25 billion by 2030 in a more balanced and sustainable manner'. The Minister directed proposals on 'trade barriers and the progress of negotiations to upgrade the ASEAN - India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA)', and the article records that the 'Indian market continues to present a number of challenges, including protectionist policies with high import tariffs, the growing use of trade defense measures, increasingly stringent traceability requirements'.

  Source organisation: Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam

• 24 June 2026

  India issues countervailing duty final findings against Viet Nam on calcium carbonate filler masterbatch[31]

  Final findings in case CVD(OI)-03/2024, Vietnam sole subject country. The findings examine multiple countervailable subsidy schemes identified in Vietnam and determine their specificity and benefit calculations. Issued seven weeks after the Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was agreed.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

• 8 July 2026

  13th AITIGA Joint Committee meets in New Delhi; outstanding chapters remain[5]

  Held 6-10 July 2026 at Vanijya Bhawan, New Delhi, with the Joint Committee session on 7 July 2026, in hybrid format. All ten ASEAN Member States attended. Co-chaired by Shri Nitin Kumar Yadav, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, and Ms. Mastura Ahmad Mustafa, Deputy Secretary General (Trade), Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Malaysia. Three of eight sub-committees met: SC-CPTF, SC-NTMA and SC-ROO. The Joint Committee 'urged them to expedite the finalisation of the outstanding chapters under the AITIGA Review' and assigned 'time-bound deliverables'. India-ASEAN bilateral trade stated to have 'reached USD 128 billion during 2025-26'.

  Source organisation: Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2282336

• 15 July 2026

  ASEAN's calendar schedules 14th and 15th AITIGA Joint Committees[35]

  The 'ASEAN 2026 PUBLIC CALENDAR as of 15 July 2026' lists '14th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings (TBC)' for 20-24 July 2026 and '15th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings' for 5-9 October 2026. It also lists the 'Forty-First Senior Economic Officials Meeting - India (41st SEOM-India) Consultation' for 9 August 2026 and 'The Twenty-Third AEM-India Consultation' for 21 September 2026.

  Source organisation: ASEAN Secretariat — ASEAN 2026 Public Calendar as of 15 July 2026

• 18 August 2026

  Viet Nam's Foreign Ministry marks ten years of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership[14]

  Article carried by Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sourced to Vietnam News Agency, reporting Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung and Indian Ambassador to Viet Nam Tshering W. Sherpa. Minister Trung noted 'two-way trade doubling over the past decade, while defence and security cooperation has become increasingly substantive'. Ambassador Sherpa said 'India attaches high priority to Vietnam and looks forward to working with Vietnam to translate shared values'. The article references the Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership elevated during To Lam's May 2026 State Visit and the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership falling in 2026. NO TRADE FIGURES, TARGETS OR AITIGA REFERENCES APPEAR.

  Source organisation: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam

• 11 September 2026

  Oral hearing scheduled in live Indian anti-dumping investigation naming Viet Nam[34]

  DGTR lists an oral hearing for 11 September 2026 in the 'Anti-dumping Investigation concerning imports of Cold rolled Flat Products of Stainless Steel 300 and 400 Series' involving 'China PR., Indonesia and Vietnam'. THIS DATE IS IN THE FUTURE AT THE DATE OF ACCESS and is recorded as a scheduled step, not an event.

  Source organisation: Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India

Not yet verified

The first item is this corridor’s structural weakness: with no Indian government series in the record, every unit-precise full-year figure on this page is Vietnamese, and the corridor is single-sourced. Where an item quotes a figure, the marker points to the source this page does carry on that subject — not to a source for the unverified figure itself, which by definition has none.

The registry records what could not be sourced as well as what could. These are open items, listed exactly as the registry states them — not gaps we have filled from memory or inference.

• REFUSAL, AND THE WORST GAP IN THIS FILE: NO INDIAN GOVERNMENT TRADE SERIES FOR VIET NAM EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THIS RECORD, SO THE CORRIDOR IS MEASURED FROM ONE SIDE ONLY. India's official bilateral figures live in TRADESTAT, the Department of Commerce export-import databank sourced from DGCI&S. The country-wise total trade page at tradestat.commerce.gov.in was reached and its metadata read in full: 'VIETNAM SOC REP' is present in the country dropdown; fiscal years 2018-2019 through 2025-2026 are offered; currency options are 'US $ Million' and 'Rs Crore'; the page states 'Data available 2017-2018 to 2025-2026' and 'Last data updated on 07/08/2026'; the source is stated as 'Metadata on DGCI&S'. THE FIGURES SIT BEHIND A FORM THAT MUST BE SUBMITTED AND THE FETCH TOOL CANNOT SUBMIT IT; the page returned 'No Result found'. This is a refusal, not an absence: the data demonstrably exists, covers this corridor, and was refreshed eleven days before the date of access. THE CONSEQUENCE IS STRUCTURAL. Every full-year figure in this file with unit precision is Vietnamese. India's side of the corridor is represented only by rounded prose figures published by its mission in Hanoi, one set of which is mislabelled by period. ANY USE OF THIS FILE MUST TREAT THE CORRIDOR AS SINGLE-SOURCED.[10][11]
• THE EMBASSY OF INDIA, HANOI'S CURRENT HEADLINE FIGURES ARE PUBLISHED UNDER A PERIOD LABEL THAT DOES NOT MATCH THE DATA. The 'Bilateral Relations' page, document date May 2026, states 'In 2025-2026, India-Viet Nam bilateral trade crossed USD 16 billion', 'India's export to Viet Nam accounted to approx. USD 6.11 billion' and 'Viet Nam's exports to India were approx. USD 10.35 billion'. On every other page of the same mission '2025-2026' denotes the Indian fiscal year April to March. But Viet Nam Customs Table 20B/TCHQ gives calendar-2025 imports from India of 6,112,949,670 dollars, which rounds to 6.11; Table 19B/TCHQ gives calendar-2025 exports to India of 10,351,049,218, which rounds to 10.35; and the two sum to 16,463,998,888, which 'crossed USD 16 billion' describes. ALL THREE QUANTITIES COINCIDE TO THE PRINTED PRECISION. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE STATES THE PROVENANCE OF THE MISSION'S '2025-2026' FIGURES — unlike its calendar-2024 figures, which it expressly attributes to 'Vietnamese figure', these carry no attribution at all. THE REGISTRY DOES NOT DECLARE WHICH READING IS TRUE. It records that the figures cannot be used as an Indian fiscal-year observation without this caveat, and cannot be chained to the mission's own fiscal 2024-25 figures as though the two formed a series.[15][8][9]
• NO OFFICIAL SOURCE ON EITHER SIDE DESCRIBES HOW THE GOODS PHYSICALLY MOVE BY SEA. Some 16.5 billion dollars of merchandise crossed this corridor in calendar 2025, overwhelmingly by ship, and NOT ONE INDIAN OR VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT SOURCE FETCHED NAMES A DIRECT CONTAINER SERVICE, A SHIPPING LINE, A PORT PAIR, A SAILING FREQUENCY OR A TRANSIT TIME. Searches across Indian and Vietnamese government domains returned only thematic maritime language from the May 2026 Joint Statement — 'maritime countries with a millennia-old history of exchanges', oceanography cooperation, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea — and two 2013 shipping agreements listed without content. The air-side record, by contrast, is comparatively rich: carriers, city pairs and weekly frequencies are all published. THE ASYMMETRY IS ITSELF THE FINDING: the official record documents the mode that carries the passengers and ignores the mode that carries the trade.[8][9][6]
• THE OFFICIALLY STATED DEADLINE FOR CONCLUDING THE AITIGA REVIEW WAS 2025, IT WAS MISSED, AND NO REPLACEMENT DEADLINE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED BY ANYONE. The Department of Commerce Annual Report 2024-25 states 'The review is targeted to conclude in 2025' and refers to 'substantial conclusion...by 2025'. PIB's 6th Joint Committee readout of 23 November 2024 records agreement to 'work towards conclusion of review in 2025'. As at 19 August 2026 the 13th Joint Committee is still urging sub-committees to 'expedite the finalisation of the outstanding chapters'. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGES THE DEADLINE WAS MISSED. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE SETS A NEW ONE. The leader-level language did not tighten in response but loosened: 'as soon as possible' in August 2024 became 'at the earliest' in May 2026. The Department of Commerce Annual Report 2024-25 remains the most recent annual report published — no 2025-26 report is listed on the Department's publications page — so the lapsed 2025 target is still the standing published departmental commitment.[4][5]
• A GOVERNMENT OF INDIA PAGE STILL PUBLISHES THE LAPSED DEADLINE AS A CURRENT EXPECTATION. The Embassy of India, Hanoi's 'Trade & Economic Relations' page states, at the date of access, that 'Both sides are participating in the review of ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), which is expected to be concluded by end - 2025.' That expectation is nearly eight months out of date and is contradicted by the Government of India's own press release of 8 July 2026. THE PAGE CARRIES NO 'LAST UPDATED' DATE, so a reader has no way to know it is stale. Its trade figures are correspondingly old — its most recent Indian-data figure is fiscal 2024-25.[11][5]
• THE EMBASSY OF INDIA, HANOI ALSO REPUBLISHES A NON-GOVERNMENT NEWSPAPER ARTICLE WHOSE CENTRAL PREDICTION IS NOW FALSIFIED, ON A GOVERNMENT DOMAIN, WITHOUT CORRECTION. The page 'Trade facilitation ahead with ASEAN-India deal upgrade' is a Vietnam Investment Review article by Thanh Thu, published 15 April 2024 — A NEWSPAPER, NOT A GOVERNMENT SOURCE — reproduced on indembassyhanoi.gov.in. It states the AITIGA review 'will conclude in 2025'. It also carries tariff-coverage figures — 76.4 per cent of goods with duty reductions, over 90 per cent with liberalised tariffs, agricultural tariffs cut from an average 10-15 per cent to zero for many categories — AND BILATERAL TRADE FIGURES FOR 2023 OF USD 14.48 BILLION, VIET NAM'S EXPORTS USD 8.56 BILLION AND IMPORTS FROM INDIA USD 5.92 BILLION. NONE OF THESE FIGURES ARE CARRIED INTO THIS FILE AS FACTS. They are recorded here only to mark that they exist on a government domain and are NOT government data. The tariff-coverage percentages in particular are the only quantification of AITIGA's tariff scope located anywhere in this pass, AND THEY COME FROM A NEWSPAPER.[11]
• NO OFFICIAL SOURCE STATES THE DATE ON WHICH AITIGA ENTERED INTO FORCE AS BETWEEN INDIA AND VIET NAM SPECIFICALLY. Article 23 makes entry into force conditional on notification by India and each individual ASEAN Member State — 'This Agreement shall enter into force on 1 January 2010 or the date by which such notifications have been made by the Governments of India and at least one (1) ASEAN Member State' — so the general date of 1 January 2010 does not establish the bilateral date. The Embassy of India, Hanoi dates the instrument only by conclusion: 'concluded in 2009', 'AITIGA, 2009'. NO VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT SOURCE FETCHED DATES VIET NAM'S OWN ACCESSION OR NOTIFICATION. The single most basic legal fact about the only preferential instrument governing this corridor is UNDOCUMENTED.[3][1]
• THE AITIGA SIGNATURE RECORD AS PUBLISHED IS INTERNALLY AMBIGUOUS ON PLACE. The treaty text hosted by the ASEAN Secretariat gives Bangkok, Thailand, 13 August 2009 as a place and date of signature, and also carries Ha Noi, Viet Nam as a place of signature with no date legible in the fetched copy. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE RECONCILES THE TWO. Recorded as printed rather than resolved.[3]
• THE PRODUCT-SPECIFIC RULES OF ORIGIN AND THE OPERATIONAL CERTIFICATION PROCEDURES UNDER AITIGA WERE NOT READ. Only the general rule was obtained — 'the AIFTA content is not less than 35 per cent of the FOB value' together with a change in tariff sub-heading. The annex of product-specific rules, the operational certification procedures, and the certificate-of-origin FORM CODE were not reached in this pass. DGFT's own process document names the three Indian issuing agencies — Export Inspection Council, MPEDA and the Textile Committee — but does NOT name the form. NO VIETNAMESE ISSUING AUTHORITY FOR AIFTA CERTIFICATES IS RECORDED AT ALL: the Vietnamese counterpart to EIC/MPEDA/Textile Committee was not obtained from any Vietnamese government source. Origin mechanics in this file are therefore complete on the Indian side and empty on the Vietnamese side.[3][13]
• VIETNAM CUSTOMS' OWN WEBSITE IS UNREADABLE BY THE FETCH TOOL AND THE SERIES WAS RECOVERED ONLY BY RECONSTRUCTING STATIC FILE PATHS. Every customs.gov.vn portal page attempted — the statistics landing page at pageId=4964, the English-language statistics pages, the article 'Merchandise trade value between Vietnam and India' at pageId=2281&aid=157201&cid=4099, and the origin-determination procedure pages — returned only HTML metadata with no body content, because the portal renders client-side. Direct HTTPS requests to customs.gov.vn were additionally refused at the network layer with a 403 on CONNECT. THE SERIES IN THIS FILE WAS OBTAINED ONLY BECAUSE VIETNAM CUSTOMS ALSO PUBLISHES STATIC PDFs ON files.customs.gov.vn, whose naming convention was deduced — {year}-t{month}-5n(ta-sb).pdf for imports by country and 5x for exports, where n and x denote nhap and xuat — and whose upload directories had to be guessed by date. SEVERAL GUESSES RETURNED 404. THIS MEANS THE FILE'S CORE SERIES RESTS ON A PATH CONVENTION, NOT ON A NAVIGABLE OFFICIAL INDEX, AND A FUTURE PASS MAY NOT FIND IT THE SAME WAY. The two tables used are cited by full URL for that reason.[8][9]
• THE VIETNAMESE SERIES IS LABELLED 'PRELIMINARY' BY ITS OWN PUBLISHER AND NO FINAL VERSION WAS LOCATED. Both Table 19B/TCHQ and Table 20B/TCHQ for December 2025 carry the marking 'Preliminary' (the filename suffix 'sb' denotes so bo). Vietnam Customs publishes final annual returns separately; NO FINAL CALENDAR-2025 TABLE WAS FOUND IN THIS PASS, more than seven months after the year ended. Every unit-precise figure in this file is therefore provisional on its publisher's own terms.[8][9]
• THE COMMODITY BREAKDOWNS DO NOT SUM TO THEIR COUNTRY TOTALS AND NO RESIDUAL IS PUBLISHED. The lines extracted from Table 19B/TCHQ fall well short of India's country total of 10,351,049,218, and those from Table 20B/TCHQ fall short of 6,112,949,670. The tables carry further lines not extracted here and an unallocated remainder. NEITHER TABLE PRINTS AN 'OTHERS' OR RESIDUAL LINE THAT WAS READ. THE ORDERING OF COMMODITIES IN THIS FILE IS THE REGISTRY'S OWN, BY VALUE; the source prints them in a fixed nomenclature sequence and RANKS NOTHING. No share of total is published for any commodity by any source.[8][9]
• NO INDIAN SOURCE PUBLISHES COMMODITY VALUES FOR THIS CORRIDOR AT ALL. The Embassy of India, Hanoi names twelve Indian export lines and fourteen import lines with NO VALUES, NO SHARES, NO HS CODES AND NO STATED ORDERING PRINCIPLE — weaker than the India-Korea corridor, where the mission at least supplies chapter-level HS codes. The mission's lists also diverge materially from the Vietnamese customs tables: it names 'frozen bovine meat' as a leading Indian export while Viet Nam's table records 'Other base metals' at USD 819.5 million as the largest Indian line, and omits base metals from its leading items entirely. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE RECONCILES THE TWO LISTS.[11][9]
• THE TWO GOVERNMENTS DISAGREE ON HOW MANY DIRECT FLIGHTS THERE ARE, IN THE SAME MONTH. The Embassy of India, Hanoi (May 2026) says 'around 90 direct flights operating every week'; Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (6 May 2026) says 'nearly 100 flights per week'. Neither cites a source, a carrier list or a schedule. The discrepancy is roughly 11 per cent. Earlier official statements are in non-comparable units — 'four citifies on both sides' (MEA, 22 November 2022), 'over 50 direct flights' (Prime Minister of India, 1 August 2024), seven Indian cities and three Vietnamese cities with four named carriers (Embassy of India, August 2025) — SO NO OFFICIAL TIME SERIES OF AIR CONNECTIVITY EXISTS. Note also that the August 2025 carrier list still names Jet Airways in two MoUs, an airline that ceased operations in 2019.[15][25][1]
• THE TWO GOVERNMENTS DISAGREE ON VIET NAM'S RANK IN INDIA'S TRADE. Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade says 'Vietnam is India's 21st largest partner and the 4th largest within ASEAN'. The Embassy of India, Hanoi says 'Vietnam ranks as India's 20th largest trading partner and 15th export destination'. They agree that India is Viet Nam's 8th largest trading partner. NEITHER STATES THE PERIOD OR THE SERIES THE RANK IS COMPUTED ON, so the conflict cannot be resolved. Both are recorded; neither is preferred.[25][15]
• INVESTMENT FIGURES CONFLICT ACROSS BOTH GOVERNMENTS AND ACROSS TIME, AND ONE OF THEM APPEARS TO HAVE GONE BACKWARDS. On India's stock in Viet Nam: the Embassy of India, Hanoi gives 'around US$ 2 billion' estimated AND '432 valid FDI projects with total registered investment of US$ 1,095.33 million' on the same page, without reconciling the two; Viet Nam's MOIT gives '503 valid projects...with total registered capital of nearly USD 1.12 billion' as of March 2026. Project count rose 16 per cent between the two counts while registered capital rose about 2 per cent, and NO SOURCE EXPLAINS THAT. On Viet Nam's stock in India: the Embassy gives 'US$12.69 million' plus a separate VinFast commitment of 'US$ 500 million'; MOIT gives Vingroup and VinFast plans 'with a total expected capital of nearly USD 10 billion'. These measure realised stock against announced intent and NEITHER SOURCE SAYS SO. Worse, an MEA brief of 22 November 2022 recorded 'six investment projects' totalling 'US$ 28.55 million' — MORE THAN TWICE the mission's current figure of USD 12.69 million. NO OFFICIAL SOURCE EXPLAINS THE DECLINE.[11][25]
• REFUSAL: mea.gov.in SERVED 403 ON EVERY DOCUMENT PATH ATTEMPTED. The Ministry of External Affairs bilateral brief at Portal/ForeignRelation/Vietnam_Bilateral_Brief.pdf, the current brief at Portal/ForeignRelation/Ind-Vietnam-26-new.pdf and its variant Ind_Vietnam26new.pdf, and the bilateral-documents index entry for the May 2026 Joint Statement, all returned HTTP 403 client errors. ONLY ONE MEA DOCUMENT WAS READ IN THIS PASS — India-Vietnam_Relations_for_MEA_Website.pdf, WHICH IS DATED 22 NOVEMBER 2022 AND IS THEREFORE NEARLY FOUR YEARS STALE. Its figures (fiscal 2021-22 trade of USD 14.14 billion, Indian exports USD 6.70 billion, imports USD 7.44 billion, Indian investment 'around US$ 1.9 billion', Vietnamese projects 'US$ 28.55 million') are recorded only as historical comparators and NOT as current data. The Ministry's own current brief on this corridor is ABSENT FROM THIS FILE.[11]
• REFUSAL: asean.org's MAIN PORTAL PAGES COULD NOT BE READ. The ASEAN-India Free Trade Area page, the ASEAN-India economic relations page, the rules of origin page and 'ASEAN and India, a thriving partnership' all returned a JavaScript redirect stub — 'You are being redirected...Javascript is required. Please enable javascript before you are allowed to see this page.' ASEAN'S OWN NARRATIVE ACCOUNT OF AITIGA AND ITS REVIEW IS THEREFORE ABSENT. Only asean.org's static PDF assets were readable: the treaty text and the 2025 and 2026 notional calendars. THE ASEAN SECRETARIAT PUBLISHES NO READOUT OF ANY AITIGA JOINT COMMITTEE MEETING THAT WAS LOCATED IN THIS PASS — every readout in this file is India's.[35][3]
• NO OFFICIAL READOUT EXISTS FOR SIX OF THE THIRTEEN AITIGA JOINT COMMITTEE MEETINGS. India's Press Information Bureau published readouts for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 10th and 13th. NO READOUT WAS LOCATED FOR THE 1ST, 2ND, 7TH, 9TH, 11TH OR 12TH from any government or from the ASEAN Secretariat. The 7th, 9th, 11th and 12th are known only as forward entries in ASEAN's notional calendars, which are schedules and not evidence that a meeting occurred. VIET NAM'S OWN MINISTRIES PUBLISH NO AITIGA JOINT COMMITTEE READOUTS WHATSOEVER in the sources fetched, despite Viet Nam being a party. The round history in this file is therefore partly reconstructed from a calendar.[5][35]
• ASEAN'S OWN CALENDAR CONTAINS AN UNRESOLVED SCHEDULING ANOMALY. The 'ASEAN 2026 PUBLIC CALENDAR as of 15 July 2026' places the '14th AITIGA JC and Related Meetings (TBC)' at 20-24 July 2026 — ten days after the 13th Joint Committee ended on 10 July 2026 — and the 15th at 5-9 October 2026. NO READOUT OF ANY 14TH MEETING EXISTS ON ANY SOURCE FETCHED AND THE ENTRY IS MARKED 'TBC'. Whether a 14th Joint Committee took place in July 2026 is UNKNOWN at the date of access. If it did, the officially stated status recorded in this file is one meeting out of date.[35]
• INDIA'S PIB AND ASEAN'S CALENDAR GIVE DIFFERENT DATES FOR THE SAME MEETINGS. PIB dates the 8th Joint Committee 7-11 April 2025; ASEAN's calendar schedules it 9-11 April 2025. PIB dates the 10th 10-14 August 2025; ASEAN schedules it 12-14 August 2025. In both cases ASEAN marks the venue 'India (TBC)'. The discrepancies are consistent with ASEAN listing only the core meeting days and India counting the full week including sub-committees, BUT NO SOURCE SAYS SO. Both sets of dates are recorded.[5][35]
• NO ANTI-DUMPING OR COUNTERVAILING DUTY RATE ACTUALLY IN FORCE AGAINST VIET NAM IS ESTABLISHED IN THIS FILE. What is recorded is final findings — recommendations by the Directorate General of Trade Remedies to the Central Government — not the operative levy. For hot rolled flat steel (AD (OI)-13/2024, findings 13 August 2025) only dumping-margin BANDS were readable in the non-confidential version, 0-10 per cent for Hoa Phat Dung Quat Steel JSC and 20-30 per cent for all others; individual company rates are redacted. For calcium carbonate filler masterbatch (CVD(OI)-03/2024, findings 24 June 2026) the subsidy margin table is referenced at page 90 of the document's own contents BUT THE OPERATIVE DUTY RATE WAS NOT READ. For welded stainless steel pipes and tubes and for viscose spun yarn, no rate was read at all. WHETHER THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE SUBSEQUENTLY IMPOSED ANY OF THESE DUTIES BY CUSTOMS NOTIFICATION WAS NOT ESTABLISHED — the relevant notifications sit on cbic.gov.in, which was outside the source set for this pass.[30][31]
• THE FULL INVENTORY OF INDIAN TRADE-DEFENCE MEASURES NAMING VIET NAM IS NOT ESTABLISHED. DGTR's concluded-investigations index at dgtr.gov.in/anti-dumping-concluded-investigation could not be read — robots.txt could not be fetched or parsed — so the five cases recorded here were assembled from individual case pages and the current-notifications page. A sixth case, 'Anti-dumping investigation concerning imports of Flat Rolled Products of Stainless Steel' listing Vietnam among fifteen subject countries, appears in DGTR's index but its status and dates were NOT ESTABLISHED. THE COUNT OF MEASURES IN THIS FILE IS A FLOOR, NOT A TOTAL.[34]
• NO OFFICIAL SOURCE STATES THE EXACT DATE ON WHICH THE COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WAS ESTABLISHED. Every Indian and Vietnamese government source located gives the year 2016 and the occasion — Prime Minister Modi's visit to Viet Nam — and stops. Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms the tenth anniversary falls in 2026 but names no date. The Ministry of External Affairs brief of 22 November 2022 dates the earlier Strategic Partnership to 'July 2007' during the visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, again with no day. PER THE INSTRUCTION TO RECORD THE PARTNERSHIP ONLY AS OFFICIALLY DATED, IT IS RECORDED TO THE YEAR ONLY.[1][14]
• THE MAY 2026 JOINT STATEMENT IS DATED INCONSISTENTLY ACROSS GOVERNMENT OF INDIA SOURCES. The visit ran 5-7 May 2026 by the statement's own opening sentence. The Ministry of External Affairs index titles the document '...May 06, 2026'. PIB's list of outcomes for the same visit is timestamped '06 MAY 2026 3:44PM by PIB Delhi'. BOTH DATES ARE RECORDED; NEITHER IS RESOLVED.[6][19]
• THE PLAN OF ACTION ADOPTED ON 1 AUGUST 2024 HAS NO STATED PERIOD OF VALIDITY. The Embassy of India, Hanoi lists it as 'Plan of Action for Comprehensive Strategic Partnership' dated 01.08.2024 with no years attached; the Prime Minister's press statement calls it 'a new Plan of Action' and names its sectors but not its term. By contrast the earlier plan is described by MEA as a 'Plan of Action for the period 2021-23'. WHETHER THE 2024 PLAN RUNS TO 2028 OR ANY OTHER HORIZON IS UNDOCUMENTED, and whether the May 2026 elevation to ECSP superseded it is likewise unstated.[7][1]
• NO 2026 TRADE OUTTURN EXISTS BEYOND THE FIRST QUARTER. The most recent period figure in this file is Viet Nam's MOIT statement of 'USD 4.8 billion in the first three months of 2026, up 28% year-on-year', published 6 May 2026 with no direction split. NO MONTHLY OR HALF-YEAR 2026 VIETNAM CUSTOMS TABLE FOR INDIA WAS OBTAINED, though the same file-path convention would in principle carry them; NO 2026 INDIAN FIGURE OF ANY KIND EXISTS. IF THE 28 PER CENT FIRST-QUARTER GROWTH RATE HELD, THE USD 25 BILLION 2030 TARGET WOULD BE REACHED YEARS EARLY — BUT NO OFFICIAL SOURCE MAKES THAT PROJECTION AND THIS REGISTRY DOES NOT EITHER.[25]
• NEITHER GOVERNMENT PUBLISHES A BILATERAL TRADE BALANCE FOR THIS CORRIDOR. The Viet Nam surplus of USD 4,238,099,548 in calendar 2025 recorded in this file is DERIVED by this registry from two Viet Nam Customs tables and is NOT PUBLISHED BY ANY OFFICIAL SOURCE. This is a marked contrast with the India-Korea corridor, where India's own press releases name the deficit explicitly. The imbalance is addressed in official text only obliquely, through the leaders' insistence that trade grow 'in a balanced and mutually beneficial manner' and Viet Nam's undertaking 'to diversify its supply sources and to import more products from India'. NEITHER FORMULATION QUANTIFIES ANYTHING.[8][9][6]
• THE TARIFF SCOPE OF AITIGA IS NOT DOCUMENTED FROM ANY GOVERNMENT SOURCE IN THIS FILE. No official source fetched states what proportion of tariff lines is liberalised, what the staging categories are, what the exclusion or sensitive lists contain, or what preference-utilisation rate applies on this corridor. The only quantification located — 76.4 per cent of goods with duty reductions and over 90 per cent with liberalised tariffs — COMES FROM A VIETNAM INVESTMENT REVIEW NEWSPAPER ARTICLE republished on the Embassy of India, Hanoi's website, IS NOT GOVERNMENT DATA, AND IS NOT CARRIED INTO THIS FILE AS FACT. Viet Nam's National Trade Repository at vntr.moit.gov.vn was identified as the official Vietnamese repository for tariff schedules, rules of origin and FTA commitments, and its structure was read, BUT ITS FTA COMMITMENT PAGES ARE DISALLOWED BY robots.txt AND COULD NOT BE FETCHED.[11][3]
• VIET NAM'S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS CONTRIBUTES ALMOST NOTHING TO THIS FILE. Its English site was reached and one India article was read — 'Vietnam-India cooperation grows more practical, future-oriented', 18 August 2026, sourced to Vietnam News Agency — WHICH CONTAINS NO TRADE FIGURES, NO TARGETS, NO AGREEMENT DATES AND NO MENTION OF AITIGA OR ANY FTA. Its only quantitative claim is 'two-way trade doubling over the past decade', which conflicts in magnitude with the Indian Prime Minister's 'more than 85 percent' of August 2024. THE VIETNAMESE FOREIGN MINISTRY PUBLISHES NO BILATERAL BRIEF ON INDIA THAT WAS LOCATED, the counterpart to MEA's country briefs. Note also that the article is agency copy carried by a ministry, not a ministry statement.[14]
• THE DGFT SOURCES USED ARE STALE OR UNDATED. Appendix 2A, cited for AITIGA's membership list including Viet Nam, is the version 'updated as on 30.08.2022' — nearly four years old at the date of access and predating every FTA India concluded from 2024 onward. The certificate-of-origin process document SCOO.pdf, cited for the three Indian issuing agencies, CARRIES NO PUBLICATION OR REVISION DATE AT ALL, so its currency cannot be established. Both are cited only for facts unlikely to have changed, but neither can be shown to be current.[12][13]
• NO EVIDENCE WAS OBTAINED THAT ANY BILATERAL FTA IS UNDER NEGOTIATION OR CONTEMPLATED, AND NO OFFICIAL SOURCE ADDRESSES THE QUESTION DIRECTLY. The finding of 'no bilateral FTA' in this file rests on two pieces of negative and affirmative evidence — PIB's exhaustive FTA stocktake of 6 March 2026 which omits Viet Nam, and the Embassy of India, Hanoi's affirmative statement that AITIGA 'provides preferential trade regime between India and Viet Nam'. NEITHER GOVERNMENT HAS PUBLISHED A STATEMENT RULING A BILATERAL AGREEMENT IN OR OUT. The May 2026 Joint Statement, which would be the natural place for such a statement, routes the entire trade-liberalisation question through AITIGA instead. THE ABSENCE IS INFERRED FROM SILENCE PLUS AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST, WHICH IS STRONG BUT NOT THE SAME AS A DENIAL.[2][1][6]

Sources

Numbered to match the markers in the text above. Every figure on this page traces to one of these; nothing is estimated, averaged or carried over from outside the registry.

1. Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Bilateral Relations' page marked '[As on August 2025]' indembassyhanoi.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
2. Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2236134 pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
3. ASEAN Secretariat — treaty text of the Agreement on Trade in Goods under the ASEAN-India Framework Agreement, hosted on asean.org asean.org accessed 19 August 2026
4. Government of India, Department of Commerce — Annual Report 2024-25 commerce.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
5. Government of India, Press Information Bureau — 'India Hosts 13th ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement Joint Committee Meeting to Advance ASEAN-India Trade Pact Review', 8 July 2026 (Release ID 2282336) pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
6. Government of India, Press Information Bureau — 'Joint Statement on Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Republic of India and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam', Release ID 2258431 pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
7. Government of India, Press Information Bureau — English translation of Press Statement by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi during the visit of the Prime Minister of Viet Nam to India, 1 August 2024 (Release ID 2040103) pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
8. General Department of Vietnam Customs, Ministry of Finance of Viet Nam — Table 19B/TCHQ 'STATISTICS OF EXPORTS BY COUNTRY/TERRITORY-MAIN EXPORTS', December 2025, India country-total line, Year-to-date value column files.customs.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
9. General Department of Vietnam Customs, Ministry of Finance of Viet Nam — Table 20B/TCHQ 'STATISTICS OF IMPORT BY COUNTRY/TERRITORY-MAIN IMPORTS', December 2025, India country-total line, Year-to-date value column files.customs.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
10. Department of Commerce, Government of India — TRADESTAT export-import databank, country-wise total trade page tradestat.commerce.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
11. Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Trade & Economic Relations' page indembassyhanoi.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
12. Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Government of India — Appendix 2A content.dgft.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
13. Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Government of India — 'Process for Certificate of Origin for India's FTAs and PTAs' content.dgft.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
14. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam mofa.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
15. Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Bilateral Relations' page, document date May 2026 indembassyhanoi.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
16. Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam — 'Minister of Industry and Trade Le Manh Hung works with the Vietnam Trade Office in India', 13 May 2026 moit.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
17. Embassy of India, Hanoi — 'Compilation of List of Agreements/Treaties & MoUs between India and Vietnam' indembassyhanoi.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
18. indembassyhanoi.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
19. Government of India, Press Information Bureau — 'List of Outcomes: State Visit of President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to India', 6 May 2026 (Release ID 2258363) pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
20. Government of India, Press Information Bureau — Release ID 2156828 (15 August 2025) and Release ID 2282336 (8 July 2026) pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
21. Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2121030 pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
22. Government of India, Press Information Bureau, Release ID 2076227 pib.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
23. files.customs.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
24. files.customs.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
25. Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam — 'Vietnam - India: Expanding economic and trade cooperation in a new phase', 6 May 2026, interview with Bui Trung Thuong, Trade Counsellor and Head of the Vietnam Trade Office in India moit.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
26. moit.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
27. vntr.moit.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
28. mofa.gov.vn accessed 19 August 2026
29. coo.dgft.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
30. Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — final findings, 13 August 2025 dgtr.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
31. Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — final findings, 24 June 2026 dgtr.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
32. Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India dgtr.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
33. Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India dgtr.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
34. Directorate General of Trade Remedies, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India — current case listings dgtr.gov.in accessed 19 August 2026
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Data verified 19 August 2026 · rendered from the corridor registry.