Six laws passed by the Vietnamese National Assembly in late 2025 entered into force on March 1, including the Law on Artificial Intelligence, the Law on Oversight Activities of National Assembly and People’s Councils, the Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy, the Law on Investment, the Law on Planning, and the Law on Protection of State Secrets.
Leveraging AI as national intellectual infrastructure
The 2025 Law on AI, comprising eight chapters and 35 articles, marks Vietnam’s first legislation governing the technology. Passed by the legislature in December 2025, the law establishes a unified legal framework for the AI development and application, ensuring that AI advancement is safe, responsible, and human-centred. It aims to position AI as a national intellectual infrastructure and a key driver of productivity growth, innovation, technological autonomy, and national competitiveness. It also seeks to create a transparent, humane, and trustworthy legal environment that encourages cooperation, innovation, commercialisation, and global integration in the domain.
The State will back AI ecosystem and market by prioritising the use of AI products and services in public procurement, facilitating technology transfer and supply-demand matching platforms; ensuring fair and transparent access to computing infrastructure, data resources, and regulatory sandboxes; and adopting tax, investment, and financial incentives to spur research, production, and commercialisation of AI products and services.
Advancing dcentralisation and delegation of authority
Also effective from March 1, the Law on Oversight Activities of the NA and People’s Councils consists of five chapters and 45 articles, introducing several breakthrough points.
The Law on Planning, with six chapters and 58 articles, sharpens rules governing the national planning system, delineates clearer linkages among different planning categories, and sets out mechanisms to address overlaps or conflicts between plans. It bolsters decentralisation and delegation of authority in planning processes, streamlines procedures, improves plan quality, and tackles barriers in evaluating investment projects' alignment with planning frameworks.
The Law on Investment, spanning seven chapters and 52 articles, imposes a prohibition on the trade of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. It entrusts the Government with overseeing the management of investment projects in Vietnam that manufacture electronic devices for e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products exclusively for export, as long as those projects were registered, approved, or received formal authorisation from competent authorities under prevailing law prior to January 1, 2025.
The law also removes 39 conditional business lines that no longer meet the criteria stipulated in Article 7 of the Law on Investment, and revises the scope of 20 other conditional business sectors. These adjustments mark a major transition from pre-approval controls to a post-audit model, thereby safeguarding enterprises’ freedom of business operations.
The Law on Protection of State Secrets, made up of five chapters and 28 articles, defines the scope of state secrets as important undisclosed information in various fields which, if exposed or lost, could harm national interests.
Meanwhile, the 2025 Law on Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy, featuring eight chapters and 88 articles, is expected to improve business climate, enhance national competitiveness, and better protect the legitimate rights and interests of stakeholders, in line with international practices and Vietnam’s specific conditions.
