1. Quality of goods

The National Assembly recently adopted Law No. 78/2025/QH15 (“Law 78/2025”) amending the Law on Quality of Products and Goods and Law No. 70/2025/QH15 (“Law 70/2025”) amending the Law on Standards and Technical Regulations.

The adoption of Law 78/2025 and Law 70/2025 aims to further improve the efficiency of quality control activities, enhance the responsibilities of business entities and safeguard consumer interests. With effect from 1 January 2026, these Laws introduce a number of important changes as follows.

Classification of products and goods

Under Law 78/2025, products and goods are classified based on the level of risk (low-risk, medium-risk and high-risk), rather than their potential to cause safety hazards (group-1 goods and group-2 goods) as currently provided under the Law on Quality of Products and Goods. The level of risk of products and goods shall be determined by the level of impact on health and the environment, the ability to control the supply chain, and warnings from international organisations.

Quality control of products and goods shall be conducted depending on their level of risk, under the following principles:

• All products and goods must be subject to a declaration of applicable standards.
• Medium-risk and high-risk products and goods must additionally declare conformity with the relevant national technical regulation (referred to as NTR conformity). For medium-risk products and goods, conformity may be established through self-assessment or certification by an accredited certifying organisation, while for high-risk products and goods, conformity must be certified by a designated certifying organisation.
• Products and goods classified as medium-risk or high-risk shall be subject to list-based management, linked to corresponding quality management requirements.

Disclosure of applicable standards

Pursuant to Law 78/2025, producers and importers shall declare the applicable standards in one of the following forms: on goods, on their packaging, on their labels, or in documents accompanying products/goods. Law 70/2025 requires that applicable standards must not be contrary to the technical regulations or legal documents. Once the applicable standards have been declared, producers or importers must ensure that their products and goods conform to the declared standards.

Declaration of NTR conformity

Under Law 78/2025, before being circulated on the market, imported medium-risk goods must declare conformity with the relevant NTR. For imported high-risk goods, importers are required to register these goods for quality inspection via the National Single Window Portal.

Law 70/2025 also requires producers and traders subject to NTR to declare NTR conformity based on one of the following results: certification of conformity by a designated certifying organisation or an accredited certifying organisation; self-assessment conducted by producers and traders based on testing results from a designated or accredited testing laboratory; or recognition of conformity assessment results from a foreign or international organisation. Products and goods that already meet quality management requirements under other laws consistent with NTR are exempt from this obligation. Producers or traders shall register their conformity declarations via the National database on standards, measurement and quality.

Quality assurance for goods sold through e-commerce platforms

For the purpose of ensuring product quality, Law 78/2025 requires that goods sold through e-commerce platforms meet the same conditions as goods circulated on the market. For example, such goods must comply with applicable technical regulations, and product labels must display information such as codes and barcodes.

In addition, Law 78/2025 imposes specific responsibilities on sellers and operators of digital intermediary platforms facilitating e-transactions (“platform operators”):

• Sellers are responsible for providing the platform operator with information relating to the quality of the products they offer, including appellations of the goods and their origin, the names of producers or importers, standard conformity or regulatory conformity stamps, instructions for use, safety warnings (if any), and such other information as may be required by law.
• Platform operators are subject to responsibilities concerning the quality of goods traded on their platforms. They must, among other obligations, adopt appropriate measures to inspect and address non-compliant goods upon detection or at the request of competent regulatory authorities, and establish and operate systems for receiving and addressing consumer feedback and complaints regarding goods quality.

2. Land rental exemption and reduction

On 19 August 2025, the Government issued Decree No. 230/2025/ND-CP (“Decree 230”) clarifying additional cases eligible for land use fee or land rental exemption or reduction under Article 157.2 of the 2024 Land Law (including reduction of land rentals in 2025). Decree 230 takes effect from the date of signing. Set out below are the major points of Decree 230 relating to land rentals.

Cases eligible for land rental exemption or reduction

Under Decree 230, land rental is exempted for the entire lease term in the following cases:

• Land used for the construction of offices of the bank for social policies, the Vietnam Development Bank, and off-budget state financial funds operating on a not-for-profit basis established by the Government or the Prime Minister;
• Land for the construction of commune-level Post-Cultural Points;
• Land for the construction of scientific research facilities of science and technology enterprises that satisfy the conditions under the laws on science and technology;
• Land used by entities in the digital technology industry (including institutes and centres for digital technology innovation, research, and development; projects producing key digital technology products, software products, semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence);
• Land used for the construction of concentrated digital technology parks;
• Land used for the construction of the National Innovation Centre;
• Land for external and diplomatic activities managed by public non-business units (or eligible public service providers), including cases of reciprocal use, gratuitous assignment, or leases to foreign diplomatic organisations/offices under special State policies; and
• Land other than land for national defence purposes used by military units to provide public services under the model of public non-business units.

Decree 230 also provides for land rental exemption or reduction for enterprises that employ ethnic minority persons or disabled persons; as well as socialised projects in the sectors of education, vocational training, healthcare, culture, sport and environment. For agricultural projects, the exemption or reduction of land rental shall comply with the Government’s regulations on incentives for investment in agriculture and rural areas.

Reduction of land rentals in 2025 

Decree 230 provides a 30% reduction of land rentals payable in 2025 for all land users that lease land directly from the State under the annual rental payment regime. This reduction applies even to land users who are not otherwise entitled to any exemption or reduction of land rental, or whose exemption/reduction period has expired.

To be eligible for the 2025 land rental reduction, land users must submit a written request for rental reduction to the relevant tax authority or other competent agency no later than 30 November 2025. Within 30 days of receiving such request, the competent authority must determine the reduced amount and issue a decision on the land rental reduction accordingly.

Regarding the reduction of land rentals for small and medium enterprises and establishments relocated due to environmental pollution that sublease land in industrial zones (as provided in Article 202.6 of the 2024 Land Law), Decree 230 requires industrial zone developers to pass on the reduction to such sub-lessees. If the developer fails to do so, it must reimburse the reduced amount, together with any late payment charges, to the State budget.

3. Gold business

On 26 August 2025, the Government issued Decree No. 232/2025/ND-CP (“Decree 232”) amending Decree No. 24/2012/ND-CP dated 3 April 2012 (“Decree 24”) on the management of gold business. Decree 232 takes effect from 10 October 2025. Some key changes of Decree 232 are highlighted below.

Gold bar production

Under Decree 24, the State reserved the exclusive right to produce gold bars and to import/export gold materials for gold bar production. Decree 232 abolishes this exclusive mechanism and introduces a licensing mechanism administered by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV). Accordingly, gold bar production is permitted for enterprises and commercial banks that have been licensed for gold bar trading and satisfy the following conditions:

• Having charter capital of at least VND 1,000 billion in the case of enterprises or VND 50,000 billion in the case of commercial banks;
• Having no record of administrative sanctions for violations of gold trading activities, or, where such sanctions have been imposed, having fully complied with all remedial measures required; and
• Having internal regulations on gold bar production, covering procedures for material import, production, production supervision, and product quality control.

The specific procedures and documents required for obtaining a gold bar production licence will be stipulated in regulations to be issued by the Governor of the SBV. Licensed enterprises and commercial banks must comply with the gold bar production requirements under Decree 232, including disclosure of applicable standards, product quality assurance, warranty obligations, and maintenance of information systems to record production data, among other obligations.

Import and export of gold bars and gold materials

The SBV shall allocate annual quotas to enterprises and commercial banks having gold bar production licences for the import and export of gold bars and the import of gold materials. Each export or import of gold bars, or import of gold materials, requires a specific licence application to the SBV.

The SBV shall consider granting import licences for gold materials to: (i) enterprises engaged in gold trading that have processing contracts with foreign partners, allowing temporary import of gold materials for re-export after processing into jewellery or fine art products; (ii) foreign-invested enterprises producing jewellery and fine gold products, and (iii) enterprises investing overseas in gold mining.

For the export of gold materials, enterprises holding a gold mining licence may be considered by the SBV for the grant of an export licence to export gold mined domestically.

4. Selection of contractors

On 04 August 2025, the Government issued Decree No. 214/2025/ND-CP (“Decree 214”) implementing the Law on Bidding regarding the selection of contractors. Decree 214 took effect from the date of signing and replaced Decree No. 24/2024/ND-CP dated 27 February 2024 (“Decree 24”).

In general, Decree 214 largely reiterates the provisions of Decree 24. However, it also introduces amendments and supplements to certain provisions on preferential treatment and the contractor selection process in order to align with the recent amendments to the Law on Bidding under Law No. 90/2025/QH15 dated 25 June 2025. These amendments include, among others:

• Introducing preferential treatments for innovative products of Vietnamese origin, high-tech products, digital products or services, and other goods and services as listed in Article 10.1(i) of the Law on Bidding (as amended by Law No. 90/2025/QH15). Preferential treatments also apply to certain domestic contractors such as start-up enterprises and start-up support organisations recognised by competent authorities, innovative centres, science and technology enterprises, science and technology organisations, research and development centres, high-tech enterprises, or newly established enterprises arising from investment projects for the production of high-tech products.
• Permitting the inclusion, in the technical assessment criteria of bidding dossiers for construction and installation packages, including design-and-construction (EC) packages, of requirements on specific trademarks (by groups of trademarks) for materials, supplies and other relevant inputs used for construction purposes, provided that such inputs are not themselves separate items of the bidding package.
• Specifying the cases under which the contractor appointment procedure may be applied and the conditions for such application, namely: (a) the contractor selection plan has been approved; (b) funding has been allocated for implementation of the package, except for pre-bidding activities under Article 42 of the Law on Bidding; and (c) estimates have been approved where required by relevant specialised laws. Exceptions to the said conditions are emergency bidding packages set forth in Article 78.1 of Decree 214.
• Introducing the process and steps involved in ordering for supply of goods and services. The order price is to be negotiated between the ordering entity and the selected supplier on the basis of the total funding of the relevant program/project, comparison with the price of similar goods or services, and/or reasonable and lawful production or business costs borne by the supplier. In the case of goods or services supplied for the first time in the Vietnamese market, the order price will be determined by reference to the actual costs of supply plus a reasonable profit.

To implement Decree 214, the Ministry of Finance issued Circular No. 79/2025/TT-BTC dated 4 August 2025 providing guidelines for provision and publishing of information on bidding and forms of bidding documents on Vietnam National Electronic Procurement System; and Circular No. 80/2025/TT-BTC dated 8 August 2025 prescribing forms of request for proposals, evaluation report, appraisal and inspection report, and report on performance of bidding activities.