Personal blog on Vietnam business law and practice by Nguyen Quang Vu
Posted in: Legal Environment
The following is a non-exhaustive list of licenses, permits and requirements on environment which an industrial park in Vietnam need to comply with.
1. Environment impact assessment report (EIAR – Báo cáo đánh giá tác động môi trường) or environment protection plan (EPP – Kế hoạch bảo vệ môi trường).
2. Confirmation on completion of the environmental protection works (Xác nhận hoàn thành công trình bảo vệ môi trường).
The following is a non-exhaustive list of licenses, permits and requirements on firefighting and prevention applicable for an industrial park in Vietnam which are subject to the monitor of firefighting and prevention and may pose a risk of fire and explosion.
1) Appraisal of firefighting and prevention design (Thẩm duyệt thiết kế về phòng cháy chữa cháy) by the competent authority before commencing the construction.
2) Acceptance of firefighting and prevention (Nghiệm thu về phòng cháy và chữa cháy) by the competent authority before putting the construction works into operation.
3) Compulsory fire and explosion insurance for the properties of the industrial park.
Commonly, a contract would contain a clause defining the effective term of such contract (thời hạn có hiệu lực của hợp đồng). In such clause, the moments the contract take effect and cease to have effect are determined, whether by a certain period or an occurrence. Nonetheless, the Civil Code 2015 does not have any provisions on the “term” of contracts. Instead, the Civil Code 2015 has separate provisions for (i) the term or time-limit, and (ii) the moment when a contract takes effect and the circumstances where a contract is terminated.
Under the Civil Code 2015, by default, the commencement of a term by reference to an event would start on the day immediately following the date of such event but not the date of the event itself. Therefore, if the term of a contract is defined to commence on the signing date, the contract would actually take effect on the day after, which might not be what the parties intended. Due to this, a contract could be effective on the signing date if (1) so provided by law or (2) the parties agreed on a different method for calculating a term.
Regarding (1), one might argue that the provisions specific to contracts under the Civil Code 2015 should be deemed as a “different regulations” of the law. According to Article 401.1 of the Civil Code 2015, the commencement of the term of the contract would be the moment such contract is executed or otherwise agreed by the parties. However, Article 401.1 of the Civil Code 2015 also provides an exemption of “otherwise provided by relevant law”, which could cause a confusion as to which provision would prevail to govern the term of a contract.
Regarding (2), as mentioned above, the parties can agree on a different method for calculating a time-limit, which could resolve the confusion in case both provisions are applied to govern a term of a contract. For example: “The term of this Agreement shall be 2 years from the signing date of this Agreement inclusive.” In this example, the parties agree that the signing date would also count towards the term of the Agreement, which arguably could be considered as an agreement on a different method for calculating the term of the Agreement.
This post is contributed by Le Thanh Nhat, a trainee at Venture North Law.
A new Law on Cybersecurity (Luật an ninh mạng) (the CSL 2018) will come into effect from 1 January 2019 in Vietnam. Not only providing measures to secure the cyber-environment which to some extent has been regulated by the Law on Cyber-information Safety dated 19 November 2015, the CSL 2018 also includes various provisions to control the contents posted or published on the cyber-network. Below are some salient issues of the CSL 2018.
The CSL 2018 applies to all agencies, organizations and individuals involving in the protection of cybersecurity, which is broadly defined as the assurance that activities in cyberspace not causing harm to the national security, social order and safety, lawful rights and interests of agencies, organizations and individuals. In particular, the CSL 2018 will apply to overseas organisations, which have users residing in Vietnam such as Google or Facebook.
The CSL 2018 covers all networks of IT infrastructure, telecommunication, Internet, computer systems, databases, information processing, storage and controlling systems, and regulates activities of every enterprise providing services in cyberspace and Internet users including e-commerce, websites, online forums, social networking and blogs.
The CSL 2018 imposes various obligations on an operator of an information system. Under the Law on Cyber-information Safety according to which, an operators of information systems means any agencies, organizations or individuals having directly managing authority to an information system.