Vietnam IFC Establishment Resolution 222/2025/QH15

On 27 June 2025, Vietnam’s National Assembly passed Resolution 222/2025/QH15, the first piece of legislation that directly establishes an international financial centre on Vietnamese soil. Until then the centre had lived only in strategy documents. The resolution turned that intent into a legal entity: one with fixed boundaries, named authorities and an effective date. From 1 September 2025, Vietnam has a dedicated statutory framework permitting the formation and operation of an IFC within its territory.

What stands out is that the National Assembly chose a special-purpose resolution rather than waiting for a full statute. That was a deliberate sequencing call. Resolution 222 runs for five years and is expected to be replaced by a dedicated IFC law once the legal framework matures. The approach lets the project start early and refine itself in motion, instead of freezing until a complete law that could take years to draft.

This piece concentrates on the legislative act itself: how Resolution 222 came about, what it authorises in law, and the policy chain it rests on. Other facets of the centre, including its institutional and regulatory design, its market infrastructure, and its court and arbitration mechanisms, are examined in separate companion analyses.

From Resolution 98/2023 to Resolution 222/2025: the legislative chain behind the founding act

An international financial centre did not appear out of nowhere in a single document. It is the endpoint of a sequence of decisions. The most recent marker was Resolution 98/2023/QH15 on piloting special mechanisms and policies for Ho Chi Minh City — a text showing the National Assembly’s willingness to grant a locality powers beyond the general framework when development goals call for it.

The plan for a financial centre in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang was then taken up as a national orientation, laying the political and strategic groundwork for a dedicated legislative instrument. Resolution 222/2025/QH15 is the product of that process: it converts an agreed orientation into enforceable rules.

Read along this chain, Vietnam’s sequencing logic becomes visible. Top-level policy direction comes first, then a framework legislative instrument, and only afterward the implementing decrees and regulations. Each step narrows the gap between policy intent and concrete legal authority.

For readers of the policy record, the point to grasp is that Resolution 222 is not a statement of intent. It is the legislative link that locks in the prior orientation and opens the way for the sub-statutory texts that follow.

Passage by the National Assembly: date, instrument type and effect

The resolution was passed by the 15th National Assembly on 27 June 2025 by an overwhelming majority. The text carries the reference 222/2025/QH15, named to the convention of Vietnam’s legal-document system: sequence number, year of issue, and the issuing body marked as the 15th National Assembly.

A point of legal hierarchy needs to be clear. This is a resolution of the National Assembly, not a statute. In Vietnam’s system, a National Assembly resolution is enforceable, yet it is typically used for time-bound pilot or special mechanisms ahead of full codification. Choosing the resolution form here matches the start-up character of this phase.

The resolution takes effect from 1 September 2025. That effective date matters to investors because it marks the point at which the rights and incentives in the text gain a basis for enforcement, even though much still awaits decrees and guidance to give it operational form.

The instrument is set to remain in force for five years and is expected to be replaced by a dedicated IFC law. That horizon captures the nature of Resolution 222: a deliberately temporary legal scaffold, raised to test and refine before being settled into stable statute.

One centre, two cities: the scope the resolution sets

A notable legislative choice lies in how scope is defined. Resolution 222 establishes a single international financial centre, with defined geographical boundaries, located in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang. This is not two separate centres but one unified legal entity spanning two sites.

That design carries real legal consequence. Because it is a single centre, the regulatory framework, the incentives and the management mechanisms apply consistently across both sites, rather than creating two parallel rulebooks that could diverge. It also allows roles to be split by each city’s strengths under one legal roof.

Defined geographical boundaries are a core legal feature. The centre is a delimited area, set up by the Government, where rules differ from the rest of the territory. That very act of delimitation is what makes it possible to pilot beyond-framework mechanisms within a controlled space.

For investors, the scope the resolution sets answers a foundational question: where, and for whom, do the rights and incentives in the text apply. Membership attaches to the delimited area, not to the economy at large.

What the resolution authorises: the rights and incentives granted in law

The real measure of a legislative instrument is what it permits. Resolution 222 grants a package of rights and incentives that sit beyond the general legal framework. On tax, eligible entities may enjoy corporate income tax at 10% for 30 years, or 15% for 15 years, each with periods of exemption and reduction. Individuals working in the centre are exempt from personal income tax through the end of 2030.

The resolution also eases entry procedures. Foreign investor members are not required to hold an existing investment project to set up a business entity in the centre, and are exempt from certain procedures for registering capital contributions or purchases of shares or stakes. That is a marked relaxation relative to the investment law that governs the rest of the economy.

On immigration and residency, the text allows visas and temporary residence cards valid for up to 10 years for strategic investors, experts, managers and their families, with a path to permanent residence for high-level experts and senior managers. On foreign exchange, the resolution points toward a freedom of transaction considerably wider than the general regime.

One thing is worth holding in mind: most of these rights are set by the resolution at the level of principle, while the specific conditions and procedures to claim them fall to decrees and guidance. The legislative act opens the door; the sub-statutory layer decides how wide that door actually swings.

From resolution to implementation: the rule-making road after the founding act

A framework instrument like Resolution 222 is the start of the legislative process, not its end. The text itself tasks the Government and ministries with building a system of decrees and regulations to give each set of mechanisms concrete form: tax, foreign exchange, labour, investment, and operational management.

It is in that sub-statutory chain that many of the resolution’s commitments become enforceable procedure. A right stated as principle, lacking an implementing decree, remains hard to operate in practice. So the pace and clarity of the rule-making that follows is a signal worth watching as much as the resolution itself.

This is also where the five-year horizon earns its keep. That window allows implementation and learning to run together, so that when the formal IFC law is drafted, its provisions have been tested against real practice rather than theory alone.

For investors tracking the legislative process, the signal to read is the speed and consistency between the framework resolution and the texts that implement it. A strong founding act paired with slow implementation would only stretch the gap between rights on paper and rights in force.

Conclusion

Resolution 222/2025/QH15 is the moment Vietnam’s international financial centre stepped from policy direction into binding rule. Passed on 27 June 2025, effective from 1 September 2025, time-bound at five years and pointed toward codification, the text is a founding act in the proper sense: it creates the entity, delimits the boundary, and grants a beyond-framework package of rights.

The signal value sits in the legislative act itself. When the National Assembly chooses a special-purpose resolution to start, rather than waiting for a complete statute, that is a statement about resolve and about sequence. The rest, from institutional design to infrastructure and adjudication, is left to the sub-statutory layer and to companion analyses to set out. But the legal foundation is laid, and it carries a specific reference number.

Lotus Investment Group advises on cross-border M&A and FDI into Vietnam and Southeast Asia. If you are underwriting Vietnam exposure, get in touch.