During the 6th session on September 30, members of the National Assembly Standing Committee offered comments on the draft Law Amending and Supplementing Several Articles of the Law on Investment, alongside the amended Law on Bidding.
Regarding the draft Law Amending and Supplementing Several Articles of the Law on Investment, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) has proposed easing market access conditions for foreign investors along a phased roadmap, supported by comprehensive impact assessments to ensure transparency and accountability.
Minister of Finance Ngo Van Tuan noted that the bill broadens market access for foreign investors, institutionalizes Politburo Resolution No. 10, eases market entry requirements along a structured roadmap, and mandates full impact assessments to safeguard openness and transparency.
Concurrently, the MoF's proposal aims to enforce non-discrimination, remove bottlenecks associated with the negative list of restricted sectors, and foster conditions to facilitate Vietnam’s stock market upgrade.
The draft also overhauls investment incentives to stimulate green and digital economic sectors. It introduces four new support modalities: supply chain development, manufacturing, technological product innovation, and initial capital investments. Furthermore, it refines the eligibility criteria, principles, and policy frameworks governing special investment incentives.
Mr. Phan Van Mai, Chairman of the National Assembly’s Economic and Financial Committee, emphasized that the committee concurred with the necessity of amending the Law on Investment.
However, because the legislation was revised only recently during the First Extraordinary Session of the 16th National Assembly, the committee requested that the Government clarify the actual bottlenecks, root causes, scale, and feasibility of resolving them through the proposed revisions. He also stressed the need to review the bill to ensure harmonization with the Land Law, the State Budget Law, the Law on Bidding, and related legal statutes.
Regarding the relaxation of market entry barriers for foreign investors, the Standing Board of the National Assembly’s Economic and Financial Committee fundamentally endorsed the direction of expanding market access in alignment with national orientations on developing the foreign-invested sector.
Nevertheless, the committee urged rigorous scrutiny over provisions delegating authority to the Government to decide the easing of conditions that are already codified in laws, National Assembly resolutions, ordinances, NA Standing Committee resolutions, and international treaties to which Vietnam is a signatory.
Addressing special investment incentives and support measures, Mr. Mai noted that this policy group spans a broad scope and deploys substantial State preferential resources.
He proposed codifying fundamental criteria and principles directly within the primary law to determine which projects qualify for special investment incentives—particularly metrics evaluating spillover impacts, developmental momentum, and contributions to national economic competitiveness. This would minimize delegating decisive policy criteria to lower-level implementing decrees and circulars.
In particular, the committee stressed the need to articulate clear mechanisms tying incentives to the actual realization of investor commitments. Benchmarks such as registered capital, disbursed capital, technology transfer, domestic supplier integration, and domestic value added must be strictly quantified. The law should clearly define thresholds for full versus partial compliance, along with enforceable mechanisms to scale back, adjust, or claw back incentives if commitments are not met.
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