Under Vietnam Law on Investment, in case a foreign investor wishes to setup a foreign invested company (FIC), it requires an Investment Certificate from the licensing authority. Depending on the location of the FIC, the licensing authority may be the provincial People’s Committee (for companies located outside industrial or export processing zones) or the provincial Industrial and Export Processing Zones Management Authority (for companies located in industrial or export processing zones).
FIC can be either of a Wholly Foreign Invested Company and Joint Venture Company. Both of them can be organized under the form of Joint Stock Company (JSC) or Limited Liability Company (LLC).
Please note that, the establishment of FIC must be accompanied with a specific investment project. Then, the Licensing for establishing a FIC shall be varied based on (i) Investment Capital, (ii) Investment Sector and (iii) Place of Investment. Investment Project is understood as “a collection of proposals for the expenditure of medium and long-term capital in order to carry out an investment activity in a specific geographical area and for a specified duration”. Then, relevant competent authorities shall evaluate the legitimacy and the feasibility of such Investment Project to determine whether to grant Investment Certificate or not.
For example, if a foreign investor wishes to setup a hospital in Vietnam, it shall require the Investor to invest at least 20,000,000 USD (Twenty million US Dollar), while in order to setup an eye clinic it only requires to invest only 200,000 USD (Two hundred thousand US Dollar).
Lawyer Tran Trung Kien
