Vietnam to enforce sweeping digital, telecom, data laws this year

Pioneering law on digital technology industry

Vietnam will become the first country in the world to enact a standalone Law on Digital Technology Industry.

The 2025 Law on Digital Technology Industry, effective from January 1, establishes a comprehensive legal framework for developing and managing digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, digital assets, and data protection within the digital economy.

Key highlights include strong incentives for research and development, semiconductor manufacturing, AI, and flagship digital technology products, such as tax exemptions or reductions, financial support, and priority in public procurement.

Notably, digital assets including virtual and crypto-based assets are formally recognized with legal status, providing protection for ownership rights and lawful transactions.

The law also aims to shift Vietnamese companies away from low-value assembly and outsourcing toward mastering core technologies, design, and production, while fostering high-quality human resources, controlled technology sandboxing, and globally connected semiconductor ecosystems.

Stronger personal data protection

The 2025 Law on Personal Data Protection, effective from January 1, strengthens individual rights over personal data, including the right to be informed, to give consent, and to access, correct, or delete personal information.

It explicitly bans the buying and selling of personal data.

Online platforms and social networks face higher compliance obligations. 

They are prohibited from requiring identity documents to verify accounts and from collecting sensitive data such as political views, religious beliefs, or health information, without legitimate grounds.

Platforms are also barred from eavesdropping on calls, recording conversations, or reading user messages without consent, except where required by law.

Companies must clearly disclose privacy policies, provide mechanisms for data access, correction, and deletion, and report data breaches.

The law introduces post-audit controls on cross-border data transfers to protect Vietnamese citizens’ data sent overseas.

Severe violations related to cross-border data transfers can result in administrative fines of up to five percent of the previous year’s revenue of the violator, while other violations can be fined up to VND3 billion (US$114,000) for organizations. 

Criminal liability may apply in cases that cause serious harm.

Reforming public telecom services

Government Decree 295 provides detailed guidance for implementing the Telecommunications Law on public telecom services and financial mechanisms.

The decree refines the Vietnam Public-Utility Telecommunication Service Fund’s financial mechanism to support service expansion in remote and disadvantaged areas.

Telecom companies without network infrastructure are exempt from fund contributions for their first two years and receive a 50-percent reduction for the following two years, including existing licenses.

Support measures include bidding, direct ordering, or task assignment to provide public telecom services, covering both infrastructure and user devices.

The maximum contribution rate is capped at 1.5 percent of revenue, with a view to narrowing the digital divide and ensuring sustainable access to basic services.

Streamlined investment environment

The 2025 Investment Law, effective March 1, 2026, cuts 38 conditional business lines and adjusts the regulatory scope of 20 others.

Several sectors will shift from licensing requirements to declaration-based mechanisms with post-inspection, simplifying procedures and increasing flexibility.

The law removes requirements to adjust investment projects when total capital changes by 20 percent or more or when approved technologies change.

Only five cases will still require adjusting investment policy approval, reducing administrative burdens for investors.

Foreign investors will be allowed to establish enterprises before receiving investment registration certificates, provided they meet market access conditions and reporting obligations.

For Vietnamese companies investing abroad, procedures are simplified by removing the requirement for policy approval and narrowing the range of projects needing investment registration certificates.

High-tech and strategic industries

The 2025 High Technology Law, effective July 1, 2026, introduces the concepts of strategic technologies and strategic industries for the first time, prioritizing domestically developed core technologies and strategic products.

Under the new law, high-tech enterprises are divided into two groups.

Group 1 companies meeting localization and R&D spending thresholds, with at least one percent of net revenue spent on R&D in Vietnam, will receive the highest incentives, including a 10-percent corporate income tax rate for 25 years and five-year import tax exemptions for R&D materials.

Group 2 includes enterprises that meet high-tech criteria but have not yet reached the localization thresholds or R&D spending levels required of Group 1.

Startups, innovation centers, and incubators will be exempt from proving equity capacity in public-private partnership projects, while high-tech and strategic products will receive priority in bidding and public procurement.