Every business line has one of three positions on Vietnam’s market-access list: Prohibited, conditional, or named and open. The hard cases come in two shapes that feel identical at the counter. Your line may be missing from the market-access list, and for foreign investors that absence is an answer: The same access as a domestic investor, with whatever the domestic rules require.
Or the activity may fit no classification at all, and that one is genuinely undecided. Everyone at the counter has an opinion about it. None of them is in writing.
Silence is not permission, and it is not a ban. It is an unanswered question, and the file you build is how you turn doubt into a documented position. This article is that file: What you can verify yourself before asking anyone, what to ask the authority in writing, what the authority owes you once a dossier is filed, and how to keep the trail that proves all of it.
The machinery sits in the Law on Investment No. 143/2025/QH15 and Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP. If our three-question test left you unsure, this article is the next step. And if the question is really about permits, our sub-licenses guide covers that ground.
TL;DR – Silence is best resolved on paper, not at the counter. Four verified routes exist. First, the National Portal for Business Registration publishes every conditional business line and its conditions, and the responsible ministry must update them within 5 working days of the new instrument being issued. Second, you can ask the provincial investment registration authority a question in writing and keep its reply. Third, once a dossier is filed, the authority consults the sector agencies where the procedure calls for it. An agency that misses the deadline is treated as agreeing to the matters it manages. Fourth, a refusal must come with written reasons you can answer. And if your line appears in no classification at all, the business registration authority can still record it and ask for it to be added.
One caveat from practice: The written law and the law in practice are not always the same in Vietnam. Even where an agency must answer in days, the answer can take weeks. Treat every timeline in this article as the rule rather than the guarantee, and keep every step on paper.
This is our tenth article in our ongoing legal series. You may refer to the others here:
- The Three-Question Test: Is Your Business Line Prohibited, Conditional, or Actually Allowed in Vietnam?
- Appendix IV Is Not a Foreign-Investor List: Vietnam’s Conditional Business Lines, Explained
- Vietnam Sub-Licenses Explained: The Permits You Need After Company Setup
Where Did the Department of Planning and Investment Go?
Facing a silence the portals do not answer? Email info@unitedconsulting.asia.
Who Issues the Investment Registration Certificate in 2026?
Before you ask anyone anything, know who you are asking. Vietnam’s 2025 institutional reform merged the Ministry of Planning and Investment into the Ministry of Finance.
Provincial Departments of Planning and Investment (DPI) merged into provincial Finance Departments. For most projects the provincial authority issues the Investment Registration Certificate. Projects in designated zones go to their management boards instead. Check which one holds your file before you write to anyone.
Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP now vests the collection and publication of business investment conditions in the Ministry of Finance. Three windows do different jobs: The National Business Registration Portal publishes the conditions themselves.
The National Investment Portal publishes market-access conditions for foreign investors and carries Investment Registration Certificate (IRC) issuance and adjustment. And the National Investment Information System is the platform where online dossiers are filed.
Two practical consequences follow. Correspondence addressed to “the DPI” may be routed rather than answered.
Use the current name of the provincial investment registration authority. And because the systems were merged rather than renamed, identifiers changed hands midstream. Quote your certificate details, not just a project code.
What Can You Check Before Asking Anyone?
The National Portal for Business Registration
More than most investors expect. The Law on Investment requires the conditional business lines and their conditions to be published. Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP makes the Ministry of Finance responsible for compiling them.
What gets published is exactly what a licensing authority will later rely on: The conditional lines, the legal basis for conditioning each one, and the conditions that individuals and organizations must satisfy. When a law or decree changes a condition, the ministry in charge must update the listing within 5 working days of the instrument being issued, under Article 12(3) to Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP.
The first move is documentary. Find your activity in the published conditions.
Read the legal basis named beside it. Then apply the one conflict rule that resolves half of the gray cases. Where the Law on Investment and another law disagree about whether a line is banned or conditional, the Law on Investment prevails.
How Do You Ask Vietnam’s Regulators a Question in Writing?
What a Consultation Letter Should Say
Write to the provincial investment registration authority with a question it can answer without discretion. The elements of a workable letter are:
- Who you are. Investor name, project name if one exists, contact details.
- The activity, described factually. What will be produced or sold, to whom, at what site. Facts, not conclusions.
- Your reading. The line and code you believe the activity sits under, and the published basis you found it in.
- The precise question. “Does this activity require a conditional business line, and if so which one?” beats “Please advise on our business.”
- A request for a written reply. Say plainly that you are requesting written confirmation for your records. Treat whatever comes back as documentation of your position, not as an approval.
A reply may arrive as an official letter, or as the examiner’s handling notes attached to your later dossier. Keep both. Where the answer is verbal, follow it with a short written summary sent to the same office.
What Happens to Your Question Once a Dossier Is Filed?
Deemed Consent and Written Refusals
The system answers it on a clock. Where the procedure calls for it, the authority consults the state agencies whose remit the project touches.
Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP sets the discipline: The consulting agency defines the matters and the response deadline. The consulted agency answers within it and takes responsibility for its answer.
And if it does not answer in time, it is treated as agreeing to the matters it manages. For standard projects the certificate itself is due within 10 working days of a valid dossier. Treat it as something to chase, not something to rely on.
And the negative outcome is written too. If the authority refuses to grant, renew, amend or supplement a license, it must notify you in writing with reasons. That letter is not the end of the matter. It is the starting document for an answer.
What If Your Business Line Is Not on Any List?
Then you are in the gap the registration rules anticipated. A business line that is in the Vietnam Standard Industrial Classification (VSIC) is registered under its code. A line named in another legal document is registered under that document’s name.
A line in neither is not automatically refused. Under Decree No. 168/2025/ND-CP, the business registration authority considers it.
If the line is not prohibited, the authority records it in the national enterprise registration database and asks the ministry in charge to add it as a new business line. Novel activities are new lines in slow motion.
For foreign investors there is one more rule at the edge. Where Vietnam’s international commitments do not cover a sub-sector, but Vietnamese law already sets investment conditions for it, the domestic conditions apply.
Silence in the schedule of commitments is not permission. For the named lists themselves, our guide to Vietnam’s market-access list lays them out line by line.
What Should a Verification File Contain?
- The activity description you will reuse everywhere, in both languages.
- The published conditions for the lines you believe apply, with the legal basis and date checked.
- Your consultation letter and every reply, chronological, with delivery evidence.
- The classification trail. Which code, under which classification version, and why.
- The open questions that remain, each with the authority you believe owns it.
Conclusion
When the law is silent, the process is not. An officer’s verbal view does not bind the file, so get it in writing.
Perfect legal clarity before filing is not the standard: A dossier with a stated reading beats an indefinite wait. Timelines slip too: What must take days can take weeks, so build slack into any date that matters. And a written answer can be wrong later if the law changes, which is why the published conditions carry update dates. Verify on paper, keep the file, and the gray area becomes an answer you can defend.
Thinking about entering or expanding in Vietnam? Contact United Consulting to discuss how to verify your business line before you invest. Email info@unitedconsulting.asia.
