The Government Continues to Exempt Visas for Western European Countries

It has been announced on May 3rd, 2018 that visa exemption policy for 5 Western European countries has been extended as part of the Vietnam immigration policy to attract tourists to Vietnam. At the same time, the Government has decided to increase the exemption period from one year to three years.

Accordingly, the Government has a high consensus and the Prime Minister has decided to continue the visa exemption for five Western European countries, including England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. As previous regulation, the visa exemption will be expired at the end of June 2018. The exemption period has also increased from one year to three years.

Visa policy is considered to be an extension of the tourism industry because Vietnam is a country has strict visa policies, with only visa exemption for citizens of 24 countries, much less than other countries in the region.

For example, Indonesia exempts visas from 168 countries, Malaysia 162 countries, Singapore or the Philippines 159 countries, Thailand 57 countries. Besides that, these countries apply the policy of issuing visas at the border and electronic visas.

Western Europe is considered a high-paying group. Statistics show that the first visa exemption year (2015) has 720 thousand guests. In 2016, the number of visitors increased 16%, turnover reached 202 million.

In 2017, Western European visitors reached 1.5 million people, contributing to the record of the first-time Vietnam reaching 12.9 million international visitors.

According to many experts, if visas for these countries are not renewed, tourism industry of Vietnam will lose 20% of its visitors from large markets with a loss of several hundred million USD. However, losses will not stop there, as guests may form a habit of not coming to Vietnam.

This new immigration regulation will start from July 1st, 2018.

ANT Lawyers is a law firm in Vietnam located in the business centers of Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City. We provide convenient access to our clients. Please contact us to book your time in advanced to let us provide our best service. 

Call us at (+84) 24 32 23 27 71 or send us email ant@antlawyers.vn 

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Preferential Policies When Investing in DaNang Hi-Tech Park

Danang has been growing to become attractive destination for investment due to favourable conditions offered by the city administration to bring foreign investor investing into hi-tech park.

Danang is one of the five large cities of Vietnam and is the key economic hub of Central Vietnam. The location of Danang is one of the important gateway to the sea of the Central Highlands and Laos, Cambodia and Thailand to the Northeast Asia countries through the East-West Economic Corridor, and located in one of the international sea routes and air routes. Danang has a geographic location that is particularly conducive to rapid and sustainable development.

See more: Benefits of Investors in Setting up a Business in Da Nang

Danang Hi-tech Park was established in accordance with Decision No.1979/QD-TTg dated October 28th2010, after two Hi-tech Parks in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with the hope of developing the science and technology of Da Nang, the Central Region and Central Highlands of Vietnam. Covering an area of 1,129.76 hectares and the infrastructure is gradually being completed with production areas, research and development, training and nursery enterprises, administrative management, housing, logistics, logistics and high- tech services. Da Nang Hi-tech Park is expected to be the attractive place where domestic and foreign investors favourable infrastructure and incentives. Danang Hi-tech Park shall give priority to the setting up of company in high-tech areas i.e. bio-technology for agriculture, fisheries and health; microelectronics, mechatronics and optoelectronics, automation and precision engineering; information technology, communication, informatics software; petrochemical service technology. Danang is a priority city for the development of environmentally friendly industries and services, therefore investors will not be allowed to trade in industries that threaten to pollute the environment and affect national security or industries using obsolete technologies.

In addition to the infrastructure development, Danang also offers investment incentives to attract domestic and foreign investors to invest in Danang Hi-tech Park such as Decision No. 36/2013/QD-UBND and most recently Decree No. 04/2018/ND-CP will take effect from February. Decree No. 04/2018/ND-CP has given great investment incentives to investors when investing in Danang Hi-tech park. Having policies to attract domestic investment and FDI, whereby investors invest in Danang Hi-tech Park will be exempted from all or part of land rent and site clearance in some specific cases. In addition, when investing in Danang Hi-tech Park, the enterprises will be entitled to corporate income tax incentives for 15 to 30 years and exemption on corporate income tax for 4 years, and reduction of 50% for 9 years later to enterprise having new investment projects. Goods imported to be fixed assets in Hi-tech Park or machinery and equipment which cannot be produced at domestic will be exempted from import tax. In addition, experts and workers who are foreigners/overseas Vietnamese working in Hi-tech park and their family members may be considered for issuance of multiple entry and exit visas with appropriate time limits for entry purposes in accordance with the laws.

The economics of Danang is growing and the special incentives have been offered to attract investment from the city administration. This is the opportunities for investors both domestic and foreigners to invest in Danang.

ANT Lawyers is a law firm in Vietnam located in the business centers of Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City. We provide convenient access to our clients. Please contact us to book your time in advanced to let us provide our best service. 

Call us at (+84) 24 32 23 27 71 or send us email ant@antlawyers.vn

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The Purposes of Using Criminal Record Card

Under Clause 1, Article 2 of the Law on Criminal Record 2009, criminal record card is the records on the previous convictions of a person that is sentenced under valid court judgments or decisions, and banning individual from holding position, establishing or managing enterprises and cooperatives in cases where the enterprises or cooperatives are declared bankrupt by the court.

Article 7 – The Law on Criminal Record 2009 regulates that the following individual, agencies and organizations may request competent agencies to issue Criminal Record card:

Vietnamese citizens and foreigners who have been or are residing in Vietnam have the right to request the issuance of their criminal record cards;

Proceeding agencies may request the issuance of criminal record card for investigation, prosecution and trial;

State agencies, political organizations and socio-political organizations may request the issuance of criminal record to serve the personnel management, business registration, establishment and management of enterprises and cooperatives.

Criminal record cards include:

a/ Criminal record card no.1 is issued to individual, agencies and organizations defined in Clauses 1 and 3, Article 7 of this Law;

b/ Criminal record card no.2 is issued to agencies conducting the proceedings, defined in Clause 2, Article 7 of this Law and issued at the request of the individual so that he/she can know the contents of his/her criminal resume.

The basic difference of these two types is that the criminal record card no.1 only records the sentence has not been removed. If the case has been deleted, it will state “no criminal record”. The criminal record card no.2 records all previous criminal convictions regardless of whether they were deleted or not.

ANT Lawyers is a law firm in Vietnam located in the business centers of Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City. We provide convenient access to our clients. Please contact us to book your time in advanced to let us provide our best service. 

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Equity of PPP investors must make up 20% of total investment

Investors involved in projects under the public-private partnership (PPP) must have equity accounting for at least 20% of total investment capital, according to a recently released decree of the Government.

Decree 63/2018 issued early this month to replace Decree 15/2015 will come into force on June 19, 2018, with some radical revisions, one of which is an equity requirement of 20% instead of 15%. However, this rule only applies to projects worth less than VND1.5 trillion or roughly US$65 million.

With projects whose total investments are over VND1.5 trillion, the ratio of equity cannot be lower than 20% of the VND1.5-trillion amount and is not smaller than 10% of the remaining amount. 

The involvement of the State in PPP projects includes capital contributed by the State, payments for investors, land, office space, infrastructure handed over to investors, business rights transferred to investors in case of build-transfer (BT) contracts, capital to assist construction of supporting works, compensation, site clearance and resettlement.

See more: Transfer of Investment Projects in Vietnam

Meanwhile, Decree 15/2015 limits State investments in PPP projects to State capital, government bonds, municipal bonds, official development assistance (ODA) capital, and concessional loans from international donors.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the old decree restricts the participation of other legal public capital sources, which hence does not make it attractive to investors.

Regarding project transfers, the new decree provides tighter conditions than the old one. In particular, Decree 15/2015 allows an investor to transfer partial or entire rights and obligations in a certain project to the lender or another investor, even when the project is being implemented or is already finished.

Meanwhile, under Decree 63/2018, the investor can transfer partial or entire rights and duties in the project to the lender or another investor after construction work is done or when the project is in operation.

Regarding investment incentives, investors are given preferential corporate income tax, and get land use fees exempted or reduced while implementing the project.

In addition, legal assets of investors are not nationalized or seized with administrative measures.

In case of asset seizure for security purposes, investors will get compensation.

Source: The Saigon Times

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