CaliToday (06/11/2025): Vietnam’s domestic gold market was a scene of stark contrast on Thursday, as local SJC-branded bullion prices continued to fall even as global spot prices staged a mild recovery from a previous plunge.
This disconnect has once again thrown a spotlight on the significant and persistent premium that local consumers must pay for the precious metal, a gap that remains in the tens of millions of VND per tael.
A Market Disconnected
On the international market, spot gold showed signs of stabilizing, recovering slightly to trade around the $3,983 per ounce mark. This cautious rebound comes after a steep sell-off in previous sessions.
However, this global recovery failed to inspire confidence in Vietnam's domestic market.
Prices for SJC gold, the only brand of gold bullion legally recognized for trade in the country since 2012, continued their downward slide. Major jewelers and gold retailers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City adjusted their buy-sell quotations downward, reflecting a delayed reaction to the earlier global plunge rather than the current rebound.
The "Tens of Millions" Gap
The most critical story for the Vietnamese market is not the minor daily price fluctuation, but the enormous, entrenched price gap between domestic and international prices.
Even with today's domestic price decrease, the cost of one tael (37.5 grams or 1.2 troy ounces) of SJC gold remains massively inflated compared to the world benchmark.
When converted to a per-tael basis, the current world price of $3,983/ounce is still tens of millions of Vietnamese Dong cheaper than the local SJC price. This premium, which translates to a difference of well over a thousand US dollars per tael, forces Vietnamese citizens to buy gold at one of the highest effective prices in the world.
This paradox is largely attributed to Vietnam's stringent market regulations. Under Decree 24, the state has a monopoly on the production and import of gold bullion. With no new SJC bars legally supplied to the market in over a decade, extreme scarcity has divorced local prices from global trends, making domestic gold a high-risk asset driven almost entirely by local supply and demand rather than international financial movements.