answered about 7 months ago by cheapie
You are talking about black market rates, as the official rates have only been depreciated 2% in the month of June so far.
Locals mainly transact things day to day in VND, so black market rates do not affect them (unless they like to speculate and do crude forex trading.. which a lot of people do!).
As expats, day to day, you shouldn't really need USD either, so the fluctuating VND only matters when you have to convert. Companies that deal with USD denominated invoices do run into issues.
The bigger concern is inflation, as that affects prices you see every day. It's been a headline issue over the first 5 months of the year but should get clamped down in the second half of this year.
Finally, the government is stepping up enforcement of the black market money changers, to bring those rates more in line with the official rate (roughly 16,600) - legally, the money changers are allowed to buy USD and convert you into VND, but they are not allowed to sell USD to individuals, only to the banks (which would buy their USD at 16,600 the official trading band). If the government really clamps down on this, then the black market rate will have to come down close to the official rate.
