Under the 2020 Investment Law, investors are defined as organizations or individuals carrying out business investment activities, including domestic investors, foreign investors and foreign-invested economic organizations. Foreign investors are subsequently defined as foreign nationals or organizations established under foreign laws that carry out business investment activities in Vietnam; and domestic investors as Vietnamese nationals or economic organizations without any members or shareholders being foreign investors.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha co-chaired an international press conference after their talks on November 16, providing information related to the talks and major orientations to promote apress conference between the two countries.

Thanks to the development of a network of industrial parks and clusters as well as efforts to accompany investors, Hanoi has remained one of the bright spots of the country in foreign direct investment attraction.

The validity period of an APEC Business Travel Card issued by Vietnam would increase to five years from the current three years as provided in Prime Minister Decision 45 of 2006.

The State Bank of Vietnam has released the second draft of a decree on regulatory sandbox for financial technology operations in the field of banking which is expected to foster innovation, creativity and modernization of the sector.

Article 133.1 of the 2013 Land Law regarding use of agricultural land by organizations, overseas Vietnamese and foreign-invested enterprises stipulates: “Economic organizations, overseas Vietnamese and foreign-invested enterprises that wish to use land for agricultural production, forestry, aquaculture or salt making may be considered for land lease by the State for implementation of their investment projects.”

The Law on Investment, adopted on June 16, 2020, represents a remarkable effort of the Government in improving investment policies and is likely to have materially beneficial impacts on cross-border merger and acquisition transactions in Vietnam, especially transactions involving the use of land. In this article, the writers will discuss some new points of the 2020 Law on Investment with regard to M&A activities over land-using investment projects.

For a short-term investment period of between six months and 12 months, the form of investment that a foreign investor may consider is signing a loan contract with a project owner in Vietnam. Under Article 5 of the State Bank of Vietnam’s Circular 12/2014/TT-NHNN, the borrower may borrow from abroad to implement an investment project funded with foreign loans of the borrower.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry has signed a decision to officially establish a council for business cooperation in response to COVID-19, a special mechanism to connect companies and business associations with agencies and organizations both in and outside the country in the fight against the pandemic.