The draft Law on Investment (replacement) is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly for consideration and approval at the 10th session (October 2025). Giving comments on the draft draft prepared by the Ministry of Finance, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) gave some initial comments.

According to the draft, the drafting agency proposed to transfer the list of conditional industries and occupations from the law to the decree level, while the law only stipulates general principles. However, VCCI believes that this proposal needs to be carefully reviewed and reconsidered for the following reasons:

First, the regulation of the list at the law level is a great success in control. According to VCCI, the regulation of the list of conditional investment and business sectors in the Investment Law since 2014 is a great success. It ensures a complete and public collection of conditional sectors and trades, in accordance with the spirit of "enterprises are allowed to do what the law does not prohibit". This regulation also helps to strictly control the issuance of business conditions in sub-law documents, avoiding arbitrary occurrences.

Second, transferring the list to the decree level will reduce control and cause difficulties for businesses. VCCI is concerned that if the list is regulated at the decree level, it will be impossible to control the situation where sub-law documents (other decrees) arbitrarily add conditional business lines.

"According to the principle of legal validity, decrees have equal validity and the decree issued later will take precedence. This may lead to the situation where conditional business lines will be arbitrarily added, making it impossible for businesses to fully recognize the actual business conditions," VCCI analyzed.

Third, the list at the decree level may become outdated and ineffective. VCCI cited the reality from the list of goods and services subject to conditional business under the 2005 Commercial Law. Because it is not updated regularly and does not have high validity, this list is almost not applied and has become outdated. VCCI is concerned that the List of conditional business lines and occupations may also fall into a similar situation if it is downgraded to a decree.

In the context that the Party and the State are promoting administrative procedure reform and improving the investment environment, VCCI believes that there should be stricter control measures over the issuance of conditional business lines and occupations. Maintaining this list at the law level is one of those effective control measures.

Based on the above analysis, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency maintain the current regulations, that is, the regulations on the list of conditional business lines and occupations in the Investment Law. At the same time, VCCI also proposes that it is necessary to review, amend and supplement this List in the direction of abolishing unnecessary business lines and occupations that do not meet the principles for determining business investment conditions as prescribed in Article 7 of the Investment Law.