Vietnam Decree 193/2025/ND-CP: Comprehensive Implementing Decree for the Law on Geology and Minerals

Mechanism

Decree 193/2025/ND-CP was adopted on 2 July 2025 with effect backdated to 1 July 2025 — matching the effective date of the parent Law on Geology and Minerals No. 54/2024/QH15 — in order to prevent a legal gap between the framework statute and its operational implementing rules. The decree supersedes the prior implementing regime under Decree 158/2016/ND-CP.

Decentralisation architecture. The decree's central structural innovation is a two-rail licensing system. Provincial People's Committees receive authority to issue mineral exploration and exploitation licences for Group II and Group III mineral categories (metals and industrial minerals, and construction aggregates respectively). The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE — formed in 2025 from the merger of the former MONRE and MARD) retains exclusive central licensing authority for Group I minerals: rare earths, gold, uranium, thorium, and other strategic/national-security categories; cross-provincial deposits; and any mineral activity in areas with national-security implications. This is a deliberate regime recalibration — the 2016 decree kept most licensing at the central level, creating the 12–24 month bottlenecks that suppressed FDI and informal exploration activity. The 2025 decree trades throughput efficiency for provincial administrative flexibility on non-critical minerals while maintaining central strategic control on the materials that matter most for supply-chain geopolitics.

Mineral exploration licence architecture (Article 36). Seven eligibility tracks are codified: 1. Auction winners under competitive mineral-block tender 2. Non-auction selection by the competent state agency (administrative discretion track) 3. Participants in state-sponsored geological survey programmes who are invited to convert survey findings into commercial exploration 4. Expanded or deepened exploration within an existing licensed area by the current licence-holder 5. Investors or contractors for national-importance, urgency-designated, or national-target-programme projects 6. Prime-Minister-approved applications in non-auction areas (the political-economy discretion track used for sovereign JVs) 7. Applications within restricted or temporarily-restricted areas with special approval

The track architecture significantly reshapes foreign-investor pathways: Track 6 (PM non-auction approval) is the mechanism through which Australian, Japanese, and Korean minority-investor JVs into Vietnamese REE processing have historically been negotiated. The codification of Track 6 as an explicit legal pathway — rather than relying on ad hoc approvals — reduces legal uncertainty for incoming FDI while preserving political discretion at the PM level.

Financial-capacity test. Licence applicants must now demonstrate owner's equity or a bank guarantee equal to 100% of the total estimated exploration project budget, up from the prior 50% threshold. This materially raises the capital bar for entry — particularly for junior exploration companies and asset-light prospectors — and is likely to consolidate licensing around larger state-owned enterprises, integrated mining groups, and well-capitalised foreign JV partners. The VINACOMIN and state-adjacent entity advantage is structurally reinforced.

Processing timelines (Articles 66 and 67). The decree imposes a maximum 40-working-day licence processing window from receipt of a complete and valid dossier, excluding any supplementation period. This is a legally enforceable deadline — a significant departure from the prior open-ended administrative practice in which processing routinely extended 12–24 months. The timeline improvement is a direct response to World Bank and OECD FDI-climate critiques of Vietnam's mineral permitting regime.

Group I/II/III classification and the REE export-ban nexus. The three-tier classification implements the Law's framework directly:

• Group I (central licensing): Rare earths, uranium, thorium, gold, heavy oil, and other strategic/national-security minerals. Only a closed list of Prime-Minister-designated enterprises may explore, exploit, process, or export Group I minerals. This is the operative mechanism behind the 1 January 2026 raw rare-earth export prohibition enacted by Law No. 147/2025/QH15: the export ban is enforced through the designated-enterprise restriction — absent a PM designation, no legal entity can lawfully export raw REE regardless of whether it holds a prior exploitation licence.
• Group II (provincial licensing with central oversight): Broader metallic and industrial minerals (copper, zinc, iron, bauxite, industrial silica etc.).
• Group III (provincial licensing): Construction aggregates — sand, gravel, crushed stone. Subject to the minor Decree 21/2026 administrative refinement.

Downstream implications

• The designated-enterprise framework for Group I minerals is the critical chokepoint for Vietnam's REE development. Blackstone Minerals (Lai Chau), Australian Strategic Materials, and Toyota Tsusho's upstream REE investments all depend on being either designated enterprises themselves or on securing processing/offtake contracts with a designated entity. Until PM designation lists are published and periodically updated, investment-commitment risk remains elevated.
• The financial-capacity-test doubling (50% → 100%) will accelerate exit by undercapitalised Vietnamese junior explorers and drive consolidation toward VINACOMIN, TKV subsidiary entities, and larger state-adjacent vehicles. This may paradoxically improve Group II licensing throughput as the applicant pool shrinks to more credit-worthy entities.
• The 40-working-day processing guarantee is a headline FDI-attractiveness signal, but enforcement will depend on MAE's capacity build-out. The merger of MONRE + MARD into MAE in early 2025 introduced transitional administrative uncertainty; the decree's timeline mandate may face implementation friction in 2025–2026.
• Vietnam's Lai Chau Dong Pao, Lao Cai Yen Bai, and Yen Phu REE basins (~22 Mt TREO inferred resource, second-largest globally after China) are now subject to a fully codified operational regime for the first time. This removes framework-law ambiguity as a deal-blocking reason for REE JV negotiation delays.

Open questions

• When will the first PM-designated enterprise list for Group I minerals be published? This is the key near-term trigger for REE basin development timelines.
• Will the MAE issue a decree or circular specifying the form and content requirements for the financial-capacity bank guarantee, and will major Vietnamese banks extend guarantee lines for junior exploration applicants?
• How will the provincial decentralisation interact with existing cross-provincial deposits currently licensed under the 2016 regime? Article 110 transition provisions govern, but their interpretation for multi-province deposits is untested.
• Decree 21/2026 refined Group III classifications — does it signal further implementing amendments are likely for Group I or II as the MAE completes its post-merger restructuring?