The Ministry of Planning and Investment is seeking comments on the draft Decree detailing the Investment Law on special investment procedures.

This Decree details special investment procedures, stipulated in Article 36a of the Investment Law, amended and supplemented in Clause 8, Article 2 of Law No. 57 amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Planning, the Law on Investment, the Law on Investment under the public-private partnership method and the Law on Bidding on special investment procedures.

According to the drafting agency, special investment procedures are new, breakthrough regulations, applied to investment projects in the fields of semiconductor and high-tech industries... in industrial parks, export processing zones, high-tech zones and economic zones, in the direction of shifting from "pre-inspection" to "post-inspection".

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Special investment procedures will be applied to investment projects in the semiconductor and high-tech industries. Photo: Thach Thao

Accordingly, investors carry out procedures to be granted an investment registration certificate within 15 days and do not have to carry out a number of procedures to be granted licenses in the fields of construction, fire prevention, fire fighting and environmental protection (expected to shorten project implementation time by about 260 days).

From the effective date of Law No. 57 (January 15, 2025), investors proposing to implement investment projects that meet the conditions specified in Article 36a can register for investment under the new regulations.

In addition, high-tech projects in operation, if meeting the conditions of Article 36a, can also choose to apply special investment procedures to shorten the project implementation time.

Notably, in the draft, one of the procedures to ensure the implementation of an investment project is that the investor must make a deposit or submit a guarantee certificate from a credit institution regarding the deposit obligation after being granted an investment registration certificate and before organizing the implementation of the compensation, support and resettlement plan approved by a competent authority or before the time of issuing a decision to lease land or permit the change of land use purpose.

The investor will be refunded 50% of the deposit amount or have the deposit guarantee reduced by 50% at the time the investor sends the Management Board a notice of commencement of construction along with the required documents.

Refund the remaining deposit amount and interest arising from the deposit amount (if any) or terminate the validity of the deposit obligation guarantee at the time the investor has completed the self-acceptance of the construction work.

In the context of FDI capital flows tending to shift and expand in a direction beneficial to Vietnam, the contents of the draft Decree detailing the Investment Law on special investment procedures are really necessary.