Vietnam - A Legal Overview - Introduction

The laws of Vietnam are complex and new legislation is constantly being introduced. What follows is no more than an introductory overview that we hope will assist investors to decide which areas of law they will need to research further.

This summary is, necessarily, selective and is no substitute for detailed legal advice.

1. In broad outline, the business structure of most sectors of the Vietnamese economy is that a Ministry has overall responsibility for the sector. Under that Ministry there tend to be large scale State Enterprises and under those come smaller enterprises, both state and private. Added to them are the foreign invested enterprises.

2. Because Vietnam is still very much in transition to a market economy and because of the continuing predominant role of the state in economic enterprises, we would stress the necessity for any investor to be aware of the role of the Ministries. To highlight this, we outline in this Introduction the way in which an investment