The principal “rent-seeking” activity in wartime South Vietnam, and particularly in the period 1965–70, was importing. Continually rising domestic prices in a regime of a fixed foreign exchange rate and controlled interest rates allowed a Vietnamese entrepreneur to reap huge windfall gains in the relatively riskless enterprise of importing. The system permitted these privileged traders to buy goods at subsidized prices and sell them later at inflated prices. Foreign aid played a major role in this operation.

Most of the economic aid received by Vietnam was channeled through relatively few private importers who were licensed by the government. They purchased the foreign exchange from the government, placed orders for imports, and sold the imports many months later at inflated prices. Under competition and free market interest rates, this possibility would not have existed. However, given the institutional arrangements that did exist, the financial incentives in importing completely dominated those in production, attracting the cream of Vietnam's entrepreneurial pool, as well as their capital, to the importing business rather than to other enterprises that might have contributed more to long-run economic development of the country.

It was thought that 85 to 90 percent of all lending by Saigon banks until August 1970 was for the purpose of importing (AID 1976, pt. A, p. 59). Understandably, importers preferred low interest rates, and it is assumed that they used their considerable influence with their friends in government to delay needed interest rate reforms.