Foreign investments in Viet Nam are either subject to a registration requirement (“small” projects in
non-conditional sectors) or to an evaluation procedure (“large” projects and all those in conditional
sectors). In all cases, an Investment Certificate must be obtained.
The Law on Investment decentralized the authority to issue investment licences to the provincial level
and thus all foreign investment projects must be formally approved by relevant licensing authorities.
Investment Certificates are issued either by the respective province’s People’s Committee or by the
Management Committee (if the investment is located in Industrial, Export Processing Zones, Hightech
and/or Economic Zones). Investment Certificates are entirely project-specific. For some projects,
the procedure to obtain an Investment Certificate may involve approval from a number of ministries
and/or agencies at various levels of government