What is the trading license in Vietnam?
The trading license is a sub-license mandatory for foreign-owned companies in some specific cases; notably when providing services of:
- Retail,
- Wholesale of specific products (such as llubricants, rice, sugar, recorded items, books, newspapers and magazines),
- E-commerce,
- Logistics (except for specific cases),
- Goods leasing (excluding finance leasing and leasing of construction equipment with operator services),
- Commercial intermediary,
- Bid-holding,
- Commercial promotion (excluding advertising services).
The trading license is granted by the Department of Industry and Trade and in some special cases, an approval from the Ministry of Industry and Trade can be required.
If a retail outlet is also to be established, an additional sub-license is required. This last license can be difficult to obtain, especially if several outlets are to be opened as the company must obtain the outlet license for each of them and pass the Economic Needs Test (“ENT”). The ENT is not required for the first retail outlet and subsequent outlets having a total area under 500 sqm and located inside a shopping mall, provided that such outlet is not in the form of a convenient store or mini supermarket.
How to obtain a trading license?
- Contact us via phone, email or create a CRM account to define your investment requirements and objectives with our lawyers.
- Whenever possible we will meet in person to define your legal strategy in depth.
- Our legal services will notably include our advisory on the conditions to obtain the trading license and setup the retail outlet (if any).
- We will provide you with the list of required information and documents, as well as the application dossier drafted and translated by us into Vietnamese and English languages.
- At any time, you can access the CRM system to manage and keep a track of your legal services.
