This article summarizes significant changes in the 2015 Penal Code and its revisions in 2017, including penalizing commercial legal persons for committing certain crimes, scrapping the crime of illegally doing business, and criminally charging corruption-related offenders in the private sector.

The Prime Minister on January 12 decided to enact a plan to restructure public investment during 2017-20, with a vision toward 2025, aiming to form a rational public investment structure, improve efficiency of public investment and quality of public investment management institutions, and effectively seek and use other sources of investment for developing the socio-economic infrastructure system.

Public-private partnership regulations would be amended toward facilitating project implementation while ensuring strict management of projects and harmony of the interests among the State, investors and users, heard a recent meeting that discussed a draft decree to replace Decree 15 of 2015 regarding investment in the PPP form.

The National Assembly Standing Committee convened its 20th session in Hanoi on January 10, which is scheduled to deal with a range of matters within one and a half days.

Cabinet members focused discussions on the building of institutions during a regular meeting in Hanoi on December 29, also the last sitting of the Government in 2017.

Coming into force from July next year, the 2017 Railway Law, passed by the National Assembly in June, prescribes railway infrastructure planning, investment, construction, protection, management, maintenance and development. It also stipulates railway industry and railway business.

The revised Law on Technology Transfer, which was passed in June, is expected to create a solid legal basis to promote technology transfer, technology innovation, commercialization of scientific research and technological development results, and application of latest science and technology advances.

The National Assembly Committee on Financial and Budgetary Affairs should reach agreement with the Ministry of Finance on the sole focal point in public debt management, said NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan at the 13th session of the NA Standing Committee that closed on August 18.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked ministers and heads of sectors to take measures to ensure their ministries and agencies reach this year's growth target.

The 12th Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam on June 3 issued Resolution 10 affirming the development of the private economy into an important driving force of the country’s socialist-oriented market economy. Following are the principal contents of the Resolution.