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Vietnam foreign exchange and capital flow

Four areas, covering the money that moves in and out of a foreign-invested enterprise in Vietnam: how it arrives, how profit leaves, how borrowing from abroad is registered, and what happens when an investor exits.

Every article here names the instruments it rests on, with the date each took effect, and carries the date the text was last checked against them. Where a rule cannot yet be stated accurately, the article says so rather than guessing.

Remitting profit abroad

·1 min
Profit earned in Vietnam does not become remittable simply because it was earned. A set of conditions has to be satisfied first, the figures have to reconcile across several documents prepared by different people at different times, and the transfer itself has to leave through the right account.

Foreign investment capital accounts

·1 min
A foreign-invested enterprise in Vietnam runs its investment capital through a dedicated account, held separately from the account it uses for trading day to day. Which transaction belongs in which account is not a matter of preference. The distinction governs whether money can lawfully enter or leave, and a payment made through the wrong one is often discovered late, by an auditor, when unwinding it is expensive.

Offshore borrowing

·1 min
A loan from a parent company to its Vietnamese subsidiary is not simply an intercompany balance. Depending on its terms, and on what happens to it afterwards, it may fall within the State Bank’s registration regime, with obligations that begin running from events rather than from dates in a diary.

Capital transfer and exit

·1 min
When an investor sells its stake, when a project reaches its end, or when a company is wound up, the proceeds have to leave by a defined route. The route depends on what is being transferred and to whom, and the choice is made long before anyone reaches the payment.