‘I’m a billionaire now’: price boom thrills Vietnamese sitting on gold hoard

From his newly built three-storey home outside Hanoi, Trinh Tat Thang has watched the surging global gold price with mounting dread.

The Vietnamese have a long tradition of holding their wealth in gold, and a parallel practice of borrowing the asset from relatives to build homes rather than cash from a bank.

But the debt must be repaid in gold.

Family members loaned Thang four glittering one-luong bars – a standard Vietnamese unit equivalent to 1.2 troy ounces (37 grams) – to break ground on his house in 2022.

At the time, they were worth around US$10,000 on the local market. Prices have nearly tripled since then and he now owes the equivalent of more than US$29,000.

“I truly don’t know when and how I can settle the debts,” said the 44-year-old, who earns less than US$700 a month from his job in pharmaceutical marketing.