New Decree 31/2021 guiding the implementation of the Investment Law 2020 on the Market Entry of Foreign Investors

The Government has issued Decree 31/2021/ND-CP (Decree 31/2021) which becomes effective on the signing date, 26 March 2021. Decree 31/2021 provides certain appreciable provisions guiding the negative list approach and the application of market entry conditions of the Investment Law 2020. These implementing provisions (as discussed in this post) are expected to provide more certainty and transparency to foreign investors.

This post is written by Ha Thi Dung.

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New Draft Decree Implementing the Investment Law 2020

In October 2020, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) published a draft decree implementing the Investment Law 2020 (Investment Decree). The Investment Decree will replace Decree 118/2015 implementing Investment Law 2014. Some major changes provided in the Investment Decree are discussed below:

· Government guarantee - The Investment Decree clarifies that the investment assurance under Article 11.2 of the Investment Law 2020 may include (1) guarantee on foreign exchange availability, and (2) guarantee on contractual performance by Government authorities or State-owned enterprises. The clarification seems to revert to the provisions under Investment Law 2014 on government guarantees, which are removed in the Investment Law 2020.

However, it is not clear if the Government can issue such clarification in form of a government Decree since the Investment Law 2020 does not allow Government authorities to provide investment incentives to investors which are not provided in the Investment Law 2020 without the National Assembly’s approval. Guarantees on foreign exchange availability and contractual performance could also be viewed as a type of investment incentives.

New Procedures to Coordinate Various Business Commencement Steps for Vietnamese Companies

In October 2020, the Government issued the new Decree 122/2020 on the coordination between various separate procedures relating to the business commencement steps of a company in Vietnam including enterprise incorporation procedures, employee usage declaration, social insurance registration code, and registration of tax invoice. In particular,

  • Decree 122/2020 provides for a company registration application which also includes information necessary for tax and invoice registration, social insurance registration, and employee usage declaration. Previously, the company registration application only include company registration information and tax registration information; and

  • The Enterprise Registration Authority will act as the single contact point to receive the application submitted by the relevant company’s founders and will electronically transfer necessary information to the tax authority, social insurance authority, and labour authority.

Some New Key Points of The New Vietnam Investment Law 2020

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed a new Investment Law on 17 June 2020 which will become effective on 1 January 2021 (LOI 2020) and replace the current Investment Law 2014 (LOI 2014). In this briefing, we briefly discuss some new key points of LOI 2020.

This briefing is written by Ha Thi Dung and edited by Nguyen Quang Vu with the research assistance of Tran Kim Chi.

Please download our write up here.