Significant Changes To Standard Form Contracts And General Trading Conditions In Vietnam

On 16 May 2024, the Government of Vietnam promulgated Decree 55/2024 to elaborate some articles of the Law on Protection of Consumers’ Rights (Decree 55/2024) which replaced the Decree 99/2011 from 1 July 2024. Decree 55/2024 introduces some noteworthy amendments on requirements applied to standard form contracts (Standard Contracts) and general trading conditions (T&Cs) as follows:

Multilingual Standard Contracts and T&Cs:

Decree 55/2024 allows additional languages to be used in the Standard Contracts and T&Cs as agreed by the parties alongside Vietnamese. Previously, Decree 99/2011 only allowed the use of Vietnamese. This change accommodates international trade practices and facilitates clearer communication between parties.

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In

Significant Amendments Of Law On Tendering 2023

On 23 June 2023, the National Assembly adopted the new Law on Tendering effective from 1 January 2024 (Law on Tendering 2023). In an effort to foster a more competitive market, the Law on Tendering 2023 introduces significant amendments regarding the scope of application, methods, and procedures for selecting tenderers and investors. This post will summarize some notable changes in the Law on Tendering 2023.

1)         Amendments to the scope of application

Under both the Law on Tendering 2023 and the old Law on Tendering 2013, the selection of investors for (1) projects using land in accordance with the law on land, and (2) other projects in accordance with specific laws must comply with the tendering procedures.  The Law on Tendering 2023 provides for certain changes relating to such cases.

Regarding projects using land, the above requirement appears to refer to the circumstances of land allocation and land rental via tender procedure as set forth in the new Land Law effective from 1 January 2025 (Land Law 2024). Under the Land Law 2024, the provincial People’s Council must decide to allow a project  using land to be tendered. This condition is not provided in the Land Law 2013 and the Law on Tendering 2013.

With respect to other projects in accordance with specific laws, under Decree 23/2024 implementing the Law on Tendering 2023, the Government specifies projects subject to tendering under specific laws. Such projects include, for example, investment projects for the renovation and reconstruction of apartment buildings, or investment projects for the construction of domestic solid waste treatment works. Previously, the Law on Tendering 2013 did not provide for further clarification on this issue.  

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In ,

Difficulties In Dealing with the Administrative Procedures under Personal Data Protection Decree

Decree 13/2023 on Personal Data Protection (PDPD) has stirred a lot of excitement among legal professionals in Vietnam. Recently, such excitement met with the cold hard realities of the difficulties in fulfilling even the basic administrative procedures under PDPD. In particular, in July 2023, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS)  published the required contents of the file for assessment of the impact of personal data processing and the file for assessment of the impact of offshore transferring personal data. The levels of details and analysis required to prepare these files are very demanding. For example, the MPS require these files to include the following information and documents:

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In ,

The Saga Of “Made In Vietnam” Regulations.

Vietnam has promulgated a detailed rules of origin for goods exported from Vietnam to be considered as “made in Vietnam”. These rules include Decree 31/2018 and its implementing regulations. In addition, various international trade treaties to which Vietnam is a party also have their own rules of origin (e.g., ATIGA).

On the other hand, Vietnam has no clear rules in determining whether a product sold in Vietnam market is considered as being “made in Vietnam” (Made-in-Vietnam Criteria). According to Article 2(d) and Article 3(c) of WTO’s Agreement on Rules of Origin, WTO’s members must ensure that the rules of origin that they apply to imports and exports are no more stringent than the rules of origin they apply to determine whether or not a good is domestic and will not discriminate between other members, irrespective of the affiliation of the manufacturers of the good concerned. This means that the rules of origin apply to products manufactured and traded within Vietnam (i.e., Made-in-Vietnam Criteria) such as products of the Project can be:

  • equivalent to those that apply to imports and exports; or

  • more stringent than those that apply to imports and exports. Currently, there are no rules of origin, which are directly applicable to products manufactured in Vietnam and are more stringent than those applicable to imported products.

In other words, products manufactured and traded within Vietnam are always subject to equal or more stringent rules of origin than those applicable to imported products.

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In