FRESH POLICIES COME INTO FORCE IN FEBRUARY

Agricultural investment encouragement

According to Decree 210/2013/ND-CP, investors shall be exempted from land use fee for carrying out agricultural projects eligible for special preferential treatment.

For projects eligible for preferential treatment, the land use fee shall be reduced to 70%.

The fee shall be cut by half in case of encouraged investment projects.

Investors of large-scale livestock farms will receive VND 3 billion (around US$140,000) per project.

Especially, projects on production of high yielding dairy cows will get VND 5 billion (US$235,000) each. The preferential policy aims to help investors to build sewage treatment, electricity and water systems, pastures, and battery cages.

According to the Decree which shall come into force on February 10, 2014, the preferential policy is also applicable to centralized aquaculture projects at sea.

SOEs debt management

Decree 206/2013/ND-CP on management of debts of enterprises with  100% State-owned charter capital came effective since February 1, 2014.

For bad debts or unpayable debts, enterprises shall first of all make deductions to set up provisions according to regulations and apply every measure to recover debts and share difficulties with creditors and debtors in the handling of debts through freezing, rescheduling, write-off, purchase and sale.

Enterprises shall report on cases beyond their handling capacity and competence to competent agencies for settlement support measures.

Receivables and payable in foreign currencies must be converted into VND at the time of accounting and making financial statements in accordance with law. Exchange rate differences arising in a period and resulting from the revaluation of the balances of receivables and payables in foreign currencies at the end of a fiscal year must be handled under regulations of the Ministry of Finance.

For bad debts or unpayable debts, enterprises shall first of all make deductions to set up provisions according to regulations and apply every measure to recover debts and share difficulties with creditors and debtors in the handling of debts through freezing, rescheduling, write-off, purchase and sale.

New anti-corruption measure

According to Decree 211/2013/ND-CP, leaders will be granted amnesty only if they have made efforts to implement measures to prevent, monitor and correct unethical behaviors in line with the law.

Accordingly, leaders serving in the people's army or the people's public security will be punished under laws for those respective bodies.

The same legal standards will remain for leaders found to be playing a direct and definitive role in corruption.
 
The law, however, extends its reach to implicate leaders across multiple agencies linked to incidences of corruption.

The new regulation would come into effect from February 10, 2014.

Purchasing shares of Vietnamese credit institutions

The proportion of share ownership of a foreign investor and his/her relatives should not exceed 20% of the charter capital of a Vietnamese credit institution, according to Decree 01/2014/ND-CP.

The proportion of share ownership of a foreign individual does not exceed 5% of the charter capital of a Vietnamese credit institution.

The proportion of share ownership of a foreign entity should not exceed 15% of the charter capital of a Vietnamese credit institution, with the exception for foreign strategic investors whose proportion might reach 20%.

The total proportion of share ownership of foreign investors should not exceed 30% of the charter capital of a Vietnamese commercial bank. The total proportion of share ownership of foreign investors in a Vietnamese non-bank institution shall comply with the legal texts on public and listed companies.

This Decree shall take effect on February 20, 2014 and replace Decree No. 69/2007/ND-CP dated April 20, 2007 on purchasing shares of Vietnamese commercial banks by foreign investors.

Restructuring SOEs

According to Circular 194/2013/TT-BTC of the Ministry of Finance on the restructuring of SOEs that are ineligible for equitization.

This Circular is applied to Debt and Assets trading Company in Viet Nam (DATC) and SOEs after solving the financial issues and revaluing, provided that their actual value must be lower than payables.

The enterprises IPO must guarantee that the sale- prices of shares to employees and trade union organization are not lower than par value of each share as prescribed. The debt buying for restructuring enterprises must be feasible and able to recover capital effectively.

The document shall become effective from February 10, 2014.

Source: VGP