Based on consolidated feedback from the business community on institutional solutions to promote growth, VCCI considers this to be an appropriate approach by the Ministry of Justice.

“Enterprises are the entities that directly generate growth, and all institutional reforms are meaningful only when they truly unleash production and business capacity,” VCCI emphasized in its recommendations submitted to the Ministry of Justice, which include seven groups of solutions.

Reviewing the legal system based on business activity chains

The first solution is to address overlaps and inconsistencies among laws from a practical business perspective.

An industrial manufacturing enterprise currently has to comply simultaneously with regulations of dozens of laws. Illustrative photo

In practice, an industrial manufacturing enterprise must comply with provisions from dozens of laws: the Law on Investment, the Law on Enterprises, the Land Law, the Construction Law, the Law on Environmental Protection, the Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting, the Labor Code, tax laws, and others. Difficulties and even contradictions often arise not from individual laws but from their intersections, causing significant costs for enterprises.

For example, to implement an investment project, enterprises must follow procedures under the Law on Investment, the Land Law, the Construction Law, the Law on Environmental Protection, etc. Many of these procedures require one another as prerequisites, creating procedural loops in which enterprises do not know where to begin.

“VCCI recommends that the Ministry of Justice take the lead in reviewing the legal system based on the business activity chain (from establishment, investment, construction, production, import-export to dissolution), instead of reviewing each law separately. Reviewing by law reflects the state management perspective; reviewing by business chain reflects the perspective of enterprises and investors,” VCCI proposed.

Importantly, according to VCCI, this review must be conducted by regulatory authorities from the standpoint of those who must comply. Only then can all bottlenecks and overlaps faced daily by enterprises be fully identified.

The second solution is to ensure the stability and predictability of business laws.

Enterprises cannot plan business strategies for 5–10 years if they do not know how legal regulations will change in the next 1–2 years.

Enterprises, especially foreign investors, have raised concerns about the rapid pace of legal changes and the lack of transitional periods. A law may be newly issued but amended before full guiding decrees and circulars are in place. This situation increases compliance costs, as enterprises must continuously update and adjust internal processes, and raises opportunity costs, as businesses delay investments due to legal uncertainty.

VCCI recommends stipulating a minimum transition period of 12 to 24 months for legal changes that directly affect business operations, except in urgent cases. For large, long-term investment projects, investment stability clauses should be applied, ensuring that unfavorable retroactive changes in tax or investment incentives are not imposed within a certain timeframe.

From a system design perspective, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between a stable layer comprising fundamental principles such as property rights, freedom of business, and freedom of contract, which must remain highly stable and a flexible layer comprising technical regulations and specific business conditions that can be adjusted based on practical needs.

Applying the “one-in, one-out” principle

In its proposal regarding the transition from pre-inspection to post-inspection, VCCI highlighted the “one-in, one-out” principle.

Under this principle, each new business condition must be accompanied by the removal of at least one existing condition with an equivalent compliance burden. This approach has been successfully applied in countries such as the UK, Germany, and South Korea.

A comprehensive and substantive review should be conducted of all existing licenses, business conditions, and administrative procedures, assessing whether each is truly necessary, whether it can be replaced by post-inspection, and what compliance costs it imposes on enterprises.

Although the shift from pre-inspection to post-inspection has been advocated for many years, in practice many sectors still maintain “ask–give” mechanisms in various forms: sub-licenses, eligibility certificates, approval opinions, and confirmation documents. While the names may change, the nature of pre-inspection remains. At the same time, when shifting to post-inspection, inspection capacity has not kept pace, leading either to lax oversight or excessive, overlapping inspections that cause difficulties for enterprises.

VCCI therefore recommends conducting a comprehensive and substantive review of all existing licenses, business conditions, and administrative procedures, evaluating their necessity, potential replacement by post-inspection, and compliance costs.

In parallel, VCCI proposes building post-inspection capacity based on risk, focusing inspections on high-risk sectors and enterprises instead of conducting mass inspections, while applying big data and artificial intelligence to support risk classification.

At the same time, VCCI recommends shortening the time for resolving commercial disputes to match the ASEAN-4 average.

Currently, the time required to resolve commercial disputes in Vietnamese courts remains lengthy; the capacity to adjudicate complex commercial cases is limited; and civil judgment enforcement mechanisms are not yet effective. In particular, the bankruptcy mechanism is barely functioning in practice (in 2025, only 244 bankruptcy cases were resolved, a very small number compared to nearly 1.1 million active enterprises). When failed enterprises cannot exit the market in an orderly manner, resources become trapped in inefficient activities, directly affecting overall growth momentum.

Investors, both domestic and foreign, evaluate the legal environment not only based on written laws but mainly on the ability to enforce contracts and resolve disputes.

Therefore, VCCI recommends setting a specific target to reduce the time for resolving commercial disputes to the ASEAN-4 average (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia) before 2030.

“It is recommended to consider establishing specialized commercial courts in major economic centers such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Hai Phong, with judges trained in commerce, finance, and intellectual property. At the same time, commercial arbitration and mediation should be strongly developed, which is particularly important in the context of building an international financial center, alongside improving mechanisms for recognizing and enforcing foreign arbitral awards.

The bankruptcy mechanism needs substantive reform toward simplified procedures and shorter timelines, allowing failed enterprises to exit the market in an orderly manner and freeing up resources for more efficient activities.”

Ensuring consistency in law enforcement across localities

The principle of “localities decide, localities implement, localities take responsibility” is appropriate. However, enterprises operating across multiple provinces face situations where the same legal regulation is interpreted and applied differently by each locality, particularly in areas such as land, construction, environment, taxation, and fire prevention. This creates significant compliance costs and inequality among enterprises operating in different regions, while also posing a risk of fragmenting the domestic market.

VCCI recommends adding the principle of “a unified national market” as a clear limit to decentralization and delegation of authority, whereby local authorities must not issue regulations that create barriers to the movement of goods, services, labor, and capital between localities.

To ensure this, the Ministry of Justice should strengthen the review and inspection of local legal documents affecting the business environment, with the authority to recommend the prompt suspension or annulment of regulations that contradict central laws or hinder business activities. At the same time, it is recommended to develop a public database on how laws are applied in each locality in key areas so that enterprises can access and compare information.

Notably, VCCI recommends making it mandatory to quantify compliance costs for enterprises in all new policy proposals: each draft legal document must answer how much time and cost enterprises will incur to comply with the regulation. The appraisal of impact assessment quality should be assigned to an independent body rather than the drafting agency.

Currently, regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is largely formalistic, lacking quantitative data, and often conducted by the drafting agency itself, creating a clear conflict of interest. Enterprises are rarely substantively consulted during the assessment process.

VCCI therefore proposes that the Ministry of Justice strengthen the involvement of business community representatives including VCCI, key industry associations, major private enterprises, and representative FDI enterprises in a substantive manner in the research and formulation of institutional reforms, not merely as consulted parties but as co-designers of policy.

“Enterprises are the entities most directly affected and also those most capable of identifying implementation shortcomings at an early stage,” VCCI emphasized in clarifying its recommendations.