Cross-border capital transfers: the evidence chain decides

Vietnam rebuilt its outbound investment machinery this year. The Law on Investment No. 143/2025/QH15 took general effect on 1 March 2026, Decree 103/2026/ND-CP on 3 April, and Circular 34/2026/TT-NHNN of the State Bank on 31 July. Between them they fix who may send investment capital abroad, above what figure a certificate is required, and how much may leave the country before the certificate and the foreign-exchange confirmation are in hand.

Two frameworks, and what each amount is measured against

The instruments read for this article set out two frameworks under which money leaves Vietnam, and they are not interchangeable.

The first is outbound investment. Article 1 of the Law on Investment covers business investment activity from Vietnam abroad, and Decree 103/2026/ND-CP details it for outbound investment for business purposes. Article 1(2) carves two things out of the Decree: investment by buying and selling securities or other valuable papers, or through securities funds and other intermediary financial institutions abroad; and oil and gas. The Law itself took effect on 1 March 2026, apart from article 7 and its Appendix IV list of conditional business lines, which followed on 1 July, and article 50(3), which ran from 1 January.

The second is the one-way transfer regime under the Ordinance on Foreign Exchange. Article 7(2) of Decree 70/2014/ND-CP lists seven purposes for which a Vietnamese citizen may buy, transfer or carry foreign currency out: study and medical treatment; business travel, tourism and visits; fees and charges payable abroad; support for relatives abroad; inheritance; settlement abroad; and one-way transfers for other lawful needs.

Circular 20/2022/TT-NHNN, in force since 15 February 2023, sets an amount basis for six of those seven. Article 13(6) does the work for settlement abroad, and it does it twice. Its first paragraph measures the transfer by the value of the emigrant’s assets formed in Vietnam before they took foreign citizenship, or before they were permitted to reside abroad for settlement under the destination state’s rules. Its second paragraph covers transfers that pay the costs of the settlement application, and sizes them on the costs notified by the foreign side — a basis that, in the provision’s own words, “does not include the investment value required in order to be permitted to hold foreign citizenship or to settle abroad”.

The two paragraphs do different legal work. One fixes a cut-off in time and a place of formation for the assets. The other excludes a category of payment from a cost basis. What they share is that each defines itself by reference to a foreign citizenship or a permission to settle that has already been granted.

For the seventh purpose, one-way transfers for other lawful needs, Circular 20/2022 sets no amount basis at all.

Seven billion dong is the line

Under article 17(1) of Decree 103, an outbound investment registration certificate is required where the outbound capital reaches 7 billion dong, or where the project falls in a conditional sector. Below that figure and outside those sectors, article 18(1) removes the certificate procedure altogether: the investor declares the project on the National Investment Information System, takes the file code the system issues, and registers the foreign-exchange transaction with the State Bank. At 1,600 billion dong and above — or at any figure, where the project proposes special support mechanisms — article 17(2) sends the file to the Prime Minister for approval before the Ministry of Finance may issue the certificate.

The dong figure is not the investor’s own arithmetic. Article 6(5) fixes it at the foreign-currency selling rate of a licensed credit institution on the day the file is submitted, so a project can cross the threshold on the exchange rate rather than on the investment.

The sector rule that decides who may apply at all

Article 41(1) of the Law on Investment names five conditional outbound sectors: banking, insurance, securities, press and broadcasting, and real-estate business. Article 11(3) of Decree 103 attaches a condition of its own to the last of them. The investor must be an enterprise established under the Law on Enterprises.

That condition bites because the Decree is otherwise open to individuals. Article 5(5) admits a Vietnamese national as an outbound investor in their own name, except in the case set out in article 17(2) of the Law on Enterprises, and article 14(2) replaces the corporate investment decision with a registration document for individuals and household businesses. For a real-estate business project abroad, article 11(3) closes that door.

What may leave before the certificate

Article 32(1) permits investment capital out once three conditions hold together: the certificate has issued where one is required; the host state has approved or licensed the activity, or the investor holds documents proving the right to invest there; and an outbound investment capital account is open at one licensed credit institution, through which article 31 requires every transfer in both directions to run. Article 13(2) of Circular 34/2026 adds a fourth step in time: the initial foreign-exchange registration has to be confirmed before any investment capital leaves.

Ahead of that, article 32(3) allows money out to form the project — market research, site inspection, appraisal and advisers, a liaison office, tender and acquisition deposits and escrow, contract negotiation, and assets bought or leased in support. Article 32(5) caps the total at 5% of the outbound capital and no more than USD 300,000, counts it against that capital rather than treating it as separate, and leaves the Government free to provide otherwise.

Circular 34/2026/TT-NHNN, which replaced Circular 12/2016 on 31 July 2026, routes that earlier money through a pre-investment account opened for each project — one for each investor, at the same licensed bank, where several take part. That account is not a separate stage: article 6(7) requires the pre-investment account to be used as the outbound investment capital account, and any further capital account in another currency to be opened at the same bank and registered.

What the outbound investment file leaves on the record

Both outbound investment procedures, with a certificate and without one, leave a dated paper trail as a by-product of the filing.

Article 15(4) of Decree 103 and article 15(1)(b) of Circular 34/2026 both require a tax-authority confirmation that the investor’s obligations are discharged, dated no more than three months before filing. Article 14(3) of the Circular requires the bank to certify the project code, the account number and name, the currency, the account opening date, and the date and amount of each pre-investment transfer, issued within ten working days before filing. Reporting under article 35(2) of Decree 103 then runs six-monthly, before the 20th of the month after the period, and annually before 15 February.

The FATF and the OECD reported in November 2023 that citizenship and residency by investment programmes attract criminals and corrupt officials, and set out due-diligence, transparency and integrity measures for the states that run them. What a particular programme office asks a Vietnamese applicant for is a separate question, and no source read for this article answers it. What the Vietnamese procedure itself produces is narrow and dated: an account at a named bank, a tax clearance with a date on it, and a bank certificate giving the date and amount of each pre-investment transfer.

What the instruments do not settle

Whether property bought to qualify for a residence permit is real-estate business within article 41(1)(đ) is not answered in the text, and the answer decides whether an individual may apply in their own name. Point (g) of article 7(2) of Decree 70/2014, one-way transfers for other lawful needs, is left open in a different way: Circular 20/2022 sets no amount basis for it. Article 7(4) of Decree 70/2014 puts the examination of documents, and the judgement of what each transfer actually and reasonably requires, with the licensed credit institution — which is not the same thing as settling what the category covers.

A third gap sits inside Circular 34/2026. Article 6(6) requires unspent pre-investment money to come home within 60 working days, and starts that clock at the refusal letter from the host state or from Vietnam. It applies the same deadline where the project simply never forms, and a project that never forms may produce no refusal letter to start from.

What is settled is the timetable at the other end. Profit from an outbound project must come home within 12 months of being distributed, under article 34(1), unless it is retained for reinvestment under article 33. An extension of up to a further 12 months has to be notified in writing to the Ministry of Finance and to the State Bank before the first period expires. Where no retention applies and no notice is given, missing that deadline is an administrative offence, not a filing irregularity.

Rewritten on 9 September 2026. The earlier version of this article named no statute, no decree and no date, and closed by telling readers to ask the exchange-control authority and their own bank. This version names the instruments, the thresholds and the dates they took effect.