On 17/6/2020, The National Assembly has just voted to approve the Investment Law (amended) with 7 chapters, 77 articles and 4 appendices attached with 446/458 delegates voting for it (accounting for 92.34% of the total number of delegates of the National Assembly)
Conditional business lines:
- To ensure business freedom right for people and businesses, remove barriers in business activities, promote investment with business lines that the Law does not prohibit, the Law on Investment (amended) has continued to reduce 22 conditional investment and business lines.
- Supplementing 6 conditional investment and business lines.
- Simultaneously, the regulation of the List of conditional market access lines for foreign investors under the opt-out approach aims to institutionalize the Politburo's Resolution No. 50, contributing to improving transparency, feasible in applying Vietnam's market opening commitment under Free Trade Agreement.
State management and security, defense assurance
Facing many issues of "dodge" the recent law, many foreign investors affecting negatively security and defense, the law has completed, supplemented necessary tools to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of state management on investment, security and defense as follows:
- Considering conditions of security and defense in case foreign investors invest in the form of establishing enterprises, contributing capital, buying shares, or buying capital contributions at enterprises in islands, communes or wards, border towns, coastal areas or areas sensitive to security and defense.
- Supplementing regulations on investment capital appraisal in case of necessity to determine tax calculation bases, thus contributing to limiting price transfer and tax evasion.
- Supplementing the regulations not to extend the implementation of investment projects for projects using outdated technology, potentially causing environmental pollution, resource-intensive projects and projects with conditions for transfer without compensation.
- Supplementing the regulations on terminating project operation in case investors make investment activities on the basis of fake capital transactions to create a legal basis for handling cases sheltering behind other people to invest.
Expanding the autonomy of investors
Ministry of Planning and Investment also said that the Investment Law had reformed investment procedures compared to the current Law.
Accordingly, in order to ensure the policy of simplifying administrative procedures, the Law continues to reform and abolish unnecessary administrative procedures, such as the procedure of approving investment policies for a number of investment projects of individuals, households, abolish the regulation of the Prime Minister approving investment policies for projects with capital of 5,000 billion VND ...
At the same time, strengthening decentralization for the provincial People's Committee to approve investment policies, such as the golf course project ...
In addition, the Law also reforms and simplifies procedures for implementing investment projects, expanding investor's autonomy during project implementation, such as the right ofproject division, splitting, consolidation, merger and transfer.
Investment incentives and support:
The Law amended and supplemented lines eligible for investment incentives in order to attract selective foreign investment in accordance with the Politburo's Resolution No.50 and simultaneously ensure uniformity in the implementation of preferential policies and investment support under the provisions of the Investment Law, the Tax Laws and related laws; specifically:
- Supplementing a number of lines eligible for investment incentives (such as innovation activities; goods production or service provision participating in value chains and industry clusters).
- Supplementing provisions on principles, conditions for application of investment incentive policies to ensure the effectiveness and quality of the implementation of this policy (such as: application of incentives for a definite term, according to the results of project implementation; the investor must meet the incentive conditions during the incentive period as prescribed by law).
- Supplementing regulations that allow the Prime Minister to apply special incentives to create mechanisms and policies that are attractive enough to attract FDI inflows moving quickly in the current context (allowing the application of maximum discount of 50% compared to the highest level prescribed by the current Law).
There is also an important point that is being massively concerned by people that is the ban on "debt collection service business".
The Investment Law (amended) takes effect from January 1, 2021
