Vietnam Conditional Business Lines in 2025

From July 1, 2025, Law on Investment 2020 continues to be amended, many conditional business lines have been and will be abolished to reduce and simplify administrative procedures, creating favorable conditions for production and business activities. Since its inception, Law on Investment 2020 has created many potential investment opportunities for foreign investors, increasing Vietnam’s total FDI capital to grow remarkably. In the following article, Viet An Law will update new regulations on Vietnam conditional business lines in 2025.

What is conditional business lines?

According to Clause 1, Article 7, Law on Investment 2020:

“Conditional business lines are the business lines in which the business investment must satisfy certain conditions for reasons of national defense and security, social order and security, social ethics, or public health.”

Nowadays, business registration must follow the fourth-level business code stipulated in Decision 36/2025/QD-TTg on the Economic Sector System in Vietnam (effective from November 15, 2025). For conditional business lines stipulated in other legal documents, the business lines shall be recorded according to the lines stipulated in those legal documents.

However, in reality, when registering for conditional business lines, investors encounter many difficulties in implementation procedures and other legal barriers. Therefore, to ensure the rights of investors and create conditions for economic development, our State is gradually removing legal issues, including abolishing a number of conditional business lines.

Conditional business lines are added.

Conditional business lines are added include:

• Crewmember training and coaching, and ship crewmember recruitment and supply;
• Clean water (domestic water) trading;
• Architectural services;
• Apartment building operation and management services;
• Domain name registration and maintenance services;
• Data center services;
• Electronic authentication services;
• Imported newspaper distribution services
• Education accreditation;
• Overseas study consultancy services;
• Trading in fishing gear and equipment for aquatic exploitation;
• Fishing vessel registration;
• Training and retraining crew members of fishing vessels;
• Processing, trading, transporting, advertising displaying and storing specimens of plant and animal species prescribed in the CITES appendices and lists of endangered, precious, and rare forest plant and animal species and aquatic species;
• Farm breeding services;
• Domestic animal and poultry slaughtering services;
• Animals and animal product quarantine services;
• Film dissemination services.

Abolish conditional business lines from July 1, 2025

Law No. 90/2025/QH15 abolished urban rail business at serial number 97.

Previously, from January 15, 2025, according to Clause 11, Article 2, Law amending and supplementing a number of serial numbers of Appendix IV on the List of conditional business lines in the Law on Investment, serial number 50 on electricity generation, transmission, distribution, wholesaling and retailing was amended and supplemented. Serial numbers 90a, 90b and 90c were added after serial number 90; serial numbers 230, 231 and 232 were added after serial number 229 as follows:

• 90a: Import, temporary import for re-export, and temporary export for re-import of unmanned aerial vehicles, other aircrafts, aircraft engines, aircraft propellers, and equipment of unmanned aerial vehicles and other aircrafts
• 90b: Trading in unmanned aerial vehicles, other aircrafts, aircraft engines, aircraft propellers, and equipment of unmanned aerial vehicles and other aircrafts
• 90c: Research, manufacturing, testing, repair and maintenance of unmanned aerial vehicles, other aircrafts, aircraft engines, aircraft propellers, and equipment of unmanned aerial vehicles and other aircrafts …

Abolish 100% of business investment conditions prescribed for business lines not listed as conditional business lines in the Law on Investment.

According to Sub-section 2, Section II, Article 1, Resolution 66/NQ-CP 2025 on Regarding the program on reduction and simplification of administrative procedures related to production and business activities in 2025 and 2026:

“Reduce and simplify 100% of unnecessary, conflicting, overlapping, vague, or unclear business investment conditions; abolish 100% of business investment conditions prescribed for business lines not listed as conditional business lines in the Law on Investment.”

Abolish 100% of business investment conditions prescribed for business lines not listed as conditional business lines

Therefore, the target for 2026 is to abolish 100% of business investment conditions prescribed for business lines not listed as conditional business lines in the Law on Investment 2020.

• Currently, the Ministry of Finance has just submitted to the Government a proposal to abolish 16 lines in the list of conditional businesses, in the meantime, narrowing the scope of some fields and simplifying procedures for the remaining group. This is a concrete step to implement Resolution No. 68-NQ/TW of the Central Committee on continuing to innovate mechanisms, perfecting institutions, and creating an open and transparent investment and business environment.
• At the same time, the Ministry of Finance proposed to amend and supplement Clause 2, Article 7, Law on Investment in the direction of regulating the List of conditional business lines promulgated by the Government to create flexibility and initiative for the Government in controlling the promulgation of conditional investment and business sectors and professions.
• The Ministry of Finance also proposed to supplement the regulations in Article 7, Law on Investment to clarify the principles for determining business investment conditions. Accordingly, “business investment conditions are requirements and conditions on capacity, professional qualifications, human resources, facilities, and management systems that individuals and organizations must meet to carry out business investment activities in conditional business investment sectors and professions, not including technical regulations and standards issued by competent authorities on product and service quality”.
• The addition of this regulation serves as a basis for reviewing, screening and defining investment and business sectors that really need to conduct “pre-inspection” and transferring sectors and professions that currently regulate business investment conditions applicable to output products and services that can be controlled by technical regulations and standards issued by competent authorities to “post-inspection”.

The significance of abolishing some Vietnam conditional business lines in 2025

The business lines are no longer suitable for reality.

• The economy and society are constantly changing and developing. Legal regulations need to be reviewed, amended and supplemented regularly to adapt to those changes. Therefore, some businesses lines in general and some conditional businesses lines in particular will be abolished, for example, debt collection activities.
• In reality, many individuals and debt collection businesses apply negative and illegal measures to carry out debt collection activities. This not only causes social disorder but in many cases also causes damage to the debtors’ property, health, and even life.

Some industries do not need to be controlled by business conditions because there are other more effective management measures.

• In essence, business conditions are set to bind, restrict and control business entities, thereby managing society. Therefore, these conditions only apply to industries and businesses that have an impact on social order.
• However, for business lines that do not affect public interests but the products and goods that are the result of that process can affect public interests, the appropriate management method is the minimum technical limits that the products and goods (usually expressed by technical regulations and technical standards) must meet if they want to be consumed in the market. Currently, there are conformity certification organizations on the market, which are organizations licensed to perform activities certifying the conformity of products and goods with technical regulations and technical standards.

Therefore, by promulgating technical regulations (controlling risks of goods that may affect public interests) and ensuring the conformity of products and goods through certification by certification organizations, the State can control the impacts on public interests of business activities instead of promulgating business conditions for entities.

Creating development motivation for investors

• As mentioned above, registering for conditional business lines causes many legal difficulties for investors.
• Therefore, reducing a number of conditional business lines that are no longer suitable to reality and do not need to be controlled by legal conditions helps to reduce unnecessary administrative procedures for investors, thereby creating opportunities for domestic and foreign investors to develop and contribute to economic development.

This is an update on Vietnam conditional business lines in 2025 . If you have any questions about the article or need support on registering conditional business lines and related legal issues, please contact Viet An Law for timely support.