Business News

[27-10-2015] Readers will be aware from our earlier NewsBriefs dated 16 January and 6 December 2013 that employers in Vietnam are required to pay trade union fees (“TUF”), and this requirement applies regardless of whether the company concerned has an in-house trade union or not.

[19-10-2015] The manufacturing industry is one of the three industries that will see the highest salary increase rate for the entire year of 2015. According to the “Vietnam Total Remuneration Survey 2015” released last week by Mercer and Talentnet Corporation, the chemical sector ranks first in the list with a rate of 10.3 per cent, while manufacturing and life sciences rank joint-second with a rate of 10.1 per cent.

[20-10-2015] Residents of high rise apartment buildings are concerned that management boards are squandering maintenance fees. According to the law, the owner of an apartment has to pay an extra two percent of the total apartment sale price for the maintenance of facilities inside the building.

[15-10-2015] Along with the warming up of the property market, idle money was eyeing resort property as a second home and an investment with promising returns. Industry experts found that owning a resort property as a second home was becoming a popular trend amid the country's socio-economic development boosting citizens' income, urging them to look for investment channels for their idle money.

[14-10-2015] Amidst the recovery of the property market, complicated procedures and capped profits have deterred investors from converting their projects into social housing projects, noted the HCM City Real Estate Association. The situation has put developers of many commercial projects that were registered in the past three years to be converted into social housing projects in a dilemma.

[16-10-2015] On 12 October 2015, the Hong Kong Government published an update regarding its proposal for the implementation of automatic exchange of information ("AEOI") in Hong Kong. This update identifies certain changes the Government has adopted into its proposal following the comments it received during a public consultation process that took place from April to June this year.

[16-10-2015] Recently, Hanoi Department of Taxation ("HDT") and Ho Chi Minh Department of Taxation ("HCMDT") have issued a number of Official Letters ("OL") guiding VAT liability on income of foreign contractors from the transfer of trademark-use rights (OL No. 3159/CT-TTHT dated 15 April 2015 and OL No. 53638/CT-HTr dated 14 August 2015).

[13-10-2015] The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) will propose solutions to the controversial region-based minimum wage hike, the director of the Bureau for Employers’ Activities at the organization said.