Vietnam has long struggled to attract foreign investment into its power and infrastructure sectors. The Government hopes that a major overhaul of its investment policies will provide much needed stimulus.
On 14 February 2015, the Government issued Decree 15/2015/ND-CP on Investment in the Form of Public Private Partnership (“Decree 15”) for investment in infrastructure and public services sector, which took effect as from 10 April 2015. Decree 15 seeks to combine the 5-year old pilot public private partnership (“PPP”) framework with its much older cousin, the build-operate-transfer (“BOT”) framework, which has existed in various forms for more than two decades. The Government also issued Decree 30/2015/ND-CP on 17 March 2015 providing guidance on bidding requirements for selection of investors for PPP projects (“Decree 30”), which took effect as from 5 May 2015 (as part of the implementing regulations of the Law on Bidding enacted on 26 November 2013 and effective on 1 July 2014). The new PPP framework is also supported by the new Law on Investment, which was enacted on 26 November 2014 and took effect from 1 July 2015.