On July 17, 2026, Ho Chi Minh City's urban railway management authority (MAUR) and GTEL, a domestic IT and telecom group, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to bring core metro technology in-house. The first stage is Metro Line 2 (Ben Thanh-Tham Luong), now under construction beneath the city. It's still an \"MOU stage,\" confirming a framework for cooperation rather than a contract, but it signals an intent to shift Vietnam's metros-long reliant on foreign manufacturers-toward being run by the country's own engineers and companies. For those living in or planning to visit Ho Chi Minh City, it's a read on how the transport of a few years out will grow.<\/p>\n
What MAUR and GTEL signed is a memorandum to jointly advance the metro's \"system integration research,\" \"technology acquisition,\" and \"technology transfer.\" It covers the full set of core systems that run a line: signaling, communications, power supply, electrical and mechanical (E&M), supervisory control (SCADA), the operations control center (OCC), automatic fare collection (AFC), and platform screen doors (PSD). They also say they will cooperate on digitalizing operations management and maintenance, including AI, digital twins, and electronic ID (eID).<\/p>\n
The two will first concentrate the technology on Line 2, then extend it to the lines planned for 2026\u20132030. Ultimately they aim to own an integrated operations control center overseeing Ho Chi Minh City's metro network, building the capacity to handle design, integration, operation, and maintenance with Vietnamese engineers and domestic firms, MAUR explains. This is still at the announcement and memorandum stage; specific orders and figures are yet to come.<\/p>\n
Ho Chi Minh City's metro has only just gotten going, with Line 1 (Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien) opening in December 2024. Line 1 was realized with Japanese yen loans and Japanese-company rolling stock and systems, and took many years from design to construction. The following Line 2 broke ground in January 2026, but its rolling stock is being manufactured by South Korea's Hyundai Rotem. Negotiating with a foreign maker every time a line is laid, and depending on outsiders for both technology and talent - without changing this structure somewhere, it will be hard to string together the planned lines one after another.<\/p>\n
Ho Chi Minh City envisions an urban rail network of seven lines totaling some 355 km by 2035. Outsourcing all of that from scratch every time would run up endless time and cost, which is why the city chose the in-progress Line 2 as a \"testbed for cultivating homegrown technology.\" This MOU is the first move toward that.<\/p>\n
To keep it close to what residents and travelers actually feel, let's line up the two routes. Only Line 1 is running, and the reality that Line 2 is still years off becomes clear.<\/p>\n