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Law 71/2025/QH15 elevates Vietnam's digital-tech industrial policy from sub-statutory PM Decisions and government Decrees to primary National Assembly statute. This is a deliberate legal-instrument escalation: the existing 2024-09-21 Decision 1018/QĐ-TTg (semiconductor strategy) and 2024-12-31 Decree 182/2024/NĐ-CP (Investment Support Fund) were both sub-statutory acts that drew their authority from the Investment Law and Science & Technology Law. The DTI Law now provides explicit, sector-specific statutory authority that the Decision/Decree stack hangs from, and which is much harder to amend or roll back.
The Law has four pillars:
1. Industrial-policy incentives — multi-year CIT reductions for technology-transferring foreign investors; R&D cost deductions; priority public procurement for SMEs; 50% cost subsidy for domestic startups acquiring advanced foreign technology; priority access to national laboratories and shared infrastructure. 2. Workforce / talent regime — five-year personal-income-tax exemption for high-quality digital professionals; five-year visa + work-permit exemption for foreign experts; targeted support for the 50,000-engineer training pipeline (anchored to Decision 1018). 3. Digital-asset framework — first formal recognition of digital assets (including virtual / tokenised assets) as a class of property under the Civil Code, with the Ministry of Finance assigned to draft tax / incentive / disclosure rules. Vietnam is the first jurisdiction to legislate this at primary- statute level (most peers use sub-statutory regimes or pending bills — UAE VARA, EU MiCA being the closest analogues). 4. AI systems & Concentrated Digital Technology Zones — base provisions for AI governance, with sector-specific lex specialis in the parallel Law on Artificial Intelligence (134/2025/QH15, adopted Dec 2025); designation of Concentrated Digital Technology Zones with land + infrastructure incentives.
Implementing instruments include the parallel CIT Law 2025, PIT Law 2025, and Decree 221/2025/NĐ-CP on visa exemptions; subsequent MIC / MoST / MoF circulars are scheduled through 2026.
Severity 4 (mixed):
2030/2035 (vs ~70,000 today per MIC estimates); USD 43–74bn digital-economy contribution; ~USD 100bn semiconductor revenue trajectory anchored to Decision 1018. These are concrete multi-year targets backed by statutory incentives.
Vietnam digital-tech regime materially harder to roll back than PM-Decision-based regimes elsewhere; statutory recognition of digital assets as Civil Code property is a structural compliance reset for crypto / tokenisation businesses operating into Vietnam.
pipeline), AI (Law 134/2025 lex specialis), digital assets (MoF rule-making), cloud / data services (interlocks with the 2024-11-30 Law on Data and 2022-08-15 Decree 53 data-localization regime), and FDI tax/visa policy.
incentive-based rather than prohibitive; market-access barriers for foreign providers stay primarily in the Cybersecurity Law + Data Law + Decree 53 stack, not here.
semiconductor ATP, electronics assembly, and digital-services capex; statutory durability of incentives reduces the political- risk discount that has historically kept Vietnam below Malaysia / Thailand on some FDI surveys.
attach to a primary statute** — the cash subsidy envelope and workforce pipeline are politically more credible.
Southeast Asian peers on a virtual-asset legal framework; ETFs with Vietnam fintech exposure (VNM, VanEck Vietnam ETF) gain marginal lift; competitive pressure on Singapore/Hong Kong digital-asset regimes to clarify residency / token-issuance rules.
LG, Synopsys, Cadence, Marvell, Qualcomm, NVIDIA-ecosystem partners now have primary-statute authority for their tax and visa regimes (vs. sub-statutory before), which lengthens the credible incentive horizon for multi-year fab/ATP capex decisions.
is the umbrella industrial-policy frame; AI Law is the sector-specific governance instrument. Both effective in 2026.
182 Investment Support Fund + state-bank co-investment? The USD 43–74bn digital-economy targets imply substantial state capex backing but the Law itself does not appropriate funds.
exchange / token-issuance licensing framework, or will it remain a recognition-of-property regime with offshore intermediation?
2022-08-15 Decree 53 data-localization regime, and the 2024-11-30 Law on Data 60/2024/QH15 — i.e. when does the DTI Law's incentive regime override the data-localization compliance bar for foreign hyperscalers and platforms?
provinces / parks (Saigon Hi-Tech Park, Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park, Da Nang Hi-Tech Park, Bac Ninh, Bac Giang) will be designated first, and what land / infrastructure incentive deltas apply vs. existing high-tech park regimes?