Vietnam to impose stricter fines on competition violations under draft decree
By Hoa Dinh ( August 18, 2025, 04:34 GMT | Insight) -- Vietnam is proposing to amend current law to stiffen penalties against competition violations. The country's Competition Commission, under the Ministry of Trade, is seeking public comments on a draft decree that amends Decree 75, issued in 2019, to regulate administrative sanctions for violations of competition regulations.
Vietnam is proposing to amend current law to stiffen penalties against competition violations. The country's Competition Commission, under the Ministry of Trade, is seeking public comments on a draft decree that amends Decree 75, issued in 2019, to regulate administrative sanctions for violations of competition regulations.A mandate from the Politburo of the Communist Party, the draft decree is an effort to drive forward private economic development in Vietnam’s state-controlled economy by more strictly handling violations, reducing monopolistic practices and ensuring fair, equal and transparent competition among economic sectors.The draft decree is under public consultation until Aug. 21 and is planned to be submitted to the government in November.The draft keeps the maximum fines for enterprises that violate rules on anticompetitive agreements, regulations on economic concentration, and abuse dominant or monopoly positions in the market at up to 10 percent of the turnover they gain in the relevant market in the previous year. But it proposes to increase by five times the maximum penalties for violators without turnover — from up to 200 million Vietnamese dong ($7,600) as regulated in the 2019 decree to up to 1 billion dong — and expands the scope to cover violators not in the same market to prevent cases where sanctions can’t be imposed since the relevant market can’t be identified.The draft also increases by four times the fines that the chairperson of the National Competition Commission and councils that handle anticompetitive cases can impose on violators of other regulations on competition, on top of the administrative fines that they are subject to. These violations include failing to provide information when requested by authorities, disclosing confidential information related to investigations, and providing information for or mobilizing, inciting, coercing, or enabling enterprises to engage in anticompetitive or unfair practices.The fines can go up to 100 million dong for individuals instead of 25 million dong, and up to 200 million dong for organizations instead of 50 million dong.For acts involving a failure to notify authorities of activities that lead to economic concentration — including mergers, consolidation, acquisition and joint ventures — the draft proposes a fixed fine to replace the current percentage-of-revenue penalty mechanism.Specifically, violators will be fined from 1 to 4 billion dong instead of up to 5 percent of the previous year’s turnover, depending on whether the turnover is lower or higher than 3 trillion dong.The same rule is proposed for other violations of regulations on economic concentration. Instead of being fined up to 1 percent of the previous year’s turnover, violating enterprises will receive a fixed fine from 1 to 4 billion dong.The fixed fines are expected to cause less damage to enterprises, because failure to notify economic concentrations is a violation of administrative procedures and does not directly restrict competition in the market, according to the proposal....
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