However, what the business community is looking for is not merely more laws or further reductions in administrative procedures. Rather, businesses need a stable, consistent, and predictable legal environment that enables them to operate with confidence and provides a solid foundation for long-term investment plans.
Nam Linh Garment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Thanh Hoa Province earlier this March was able to expand its factory in time for the peak order season thanks to an investment procedure that was completed ahead of schedule. According to Le Linh, the company’s Director, the few weeks saved in processing administrative documents allowed the production line to begin operating earlier, ensuring orders were delivered on time while significantly reducing additional costs.
Viet Nam’s institutional landscape is showing many positive signs of change. The Business Law Flow Report 2025, recently released by the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), revealed that during just three parliamentary sessions in 2025, the National Assembly passed 89 laws — the highest number in recent legislative history, nearly three times the figure recorded in 2024, and more than five times the average of previous years.
Taken together, 120 laws were enacted in 2024 and 2025, exceeding the total number passed during the preceding eight years combined. These figures reflect a strong determination to improve the legal framework, remove bottlenecks, unlock resources, and meet the country’s new development requirements.
According to Dau Anh Tuan, VCCI Deputy Secretary-General and Head of its Legal Department, this represents a major breakthrough in legislative work, with longstanding obstacles related to land, investment, planning, housing, and taxation being addressed with unprecedented intensity.
The drafting process has also been significantly accelerated, with the timeframe reduced from around 12 months under the previous procedure to approximately four months. The average drafting period for many laws initiated in 2025 was just 126 days. Notably, many new laws have been designed as framework legislation based on broad principles, leaving the Government and relevant ministries to provide detailed regulations through subordinate legal instruments. This approach allows policies to remain flexible amid rapid economic changes and emerging business models, while still providing a sufficiently clear legal framework for businesses to invest with confidence without constraining innovation.
At the same time, a special mechanism for addressing legal obstacles has created an additional channel for rapid response. Of the 2,088 complaints and recommendations submitted by businesses and reviewed by authorities, around 38% — equivalent to 787 cases — were identified as genuine legal obstacles requiring resolution. The remainder received explanations and public responses through official online portals.
The Government has also made considerable efforts to reduce and simplify 3,085 business-related regulations, helping save more than 29,300 days of administrative processing time. Within just eight months, 15 government resolutions were issued to address difficulties in areas such as land administration, planning, investment, administrative procedures, land auctions, and social housing.
These developments demonstrate a clear shift in legislative thinking — from a management model focused heavily on control towards one aimed at facilitating development; from handling individual cases to resolving structural bottlenecks; and from paper-based procedures to data-driven governance.
VCCI’s survey findings also recorded encouraging results. Nearly 89.69% of businesses considered online administrative procedures easy to use; 89.34% said they helped save time; and 91.18% believed they reduced costs compared with traditional methods. More than 80% reported no longer having to make multiple trips or contact several agencies to complete a single administrative procedure.
For businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, institutional reform is most clearly felt through reduced paperwork, faster processing times, and fewer visits to government offices. Such changes may appear modest, but they are highly significant because time is money for businesses.
Representing the business community, VCCI Chairman Ho Sy Hung noted that although considerable progress has been achieved, there remains substantial room for further reform. While online procedures have developed rapidly, data integration across agencies is still incomplete in many areas. Businesses are sometimes required to submit both paper and electronic documents simultaneously or provide information that government agencies already possess.
Therefore, if businesses are to benefit fully from reform efforts, every new regulation must be clear, easy to understand, straightforward to implement, and free from unnecessary layers of approval.
Institutional reform must also be viewed as a long-term process that delivers substantive results. Priority should be given to significantly reducing compliance costs, improving the quality of legislative drafting, enhancing the stability, feasibility, and predictability of policies, and ensuring meaningful participation by the business community in the law-making process.
Only when institutions genuinely serve a developmental and enabling role will the evolution of business law not merely remove immediate barriers but also create a more transparent, stable, and secure business environment, foster fairer competition, and generate new drivers of growth for the country.
