The minerals legal framework and the regulators: State ownership under Article 53 of the Constitution, the Law on Geology and Minerals 2024 as amended in 2025, Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP, the September 2026 transfer to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, provincial powers, minerals and land, and foreign participation

State ownership and what it means for an investor

Article 53 of the Constitution of 2013 provides that land, water resources, mineral resources, resources in the sea and airspace and other natural resources are public property, owned by the entire people and represented and uniformly managed by the State. Everything in the minerals regime follows from that sentence. The State does not sell a deposit; it grants a time-limited right to explore for it and then to extract it, in return for a fee for the grant of mining rights and natural resources tax on what is produced. The right is personal to the licence holder, can be transferred only with the licensing authority's approval, and ends with the licence (FAQ 102).

The same principle separates minerals from land. A land use right, whether held by a Vietnamese person, a foreign-invested company or the State itself, carries no right to minerals or petroleum beneath it. A landowner who finds clay, sand or ore on its land may not dig it for sale without a licence, and an investor that buys a site in order to quarry it acquires nothing more than the surface. Conversely, a licence holder has no automatic right to the surface. For a licensed project, Article 79 of Law No. 31/2024/QH15 on Land (the Land Law 2024) allows the State to recover land for licensed mineral extraction, compensating, supporting and resettling the users, and Article 205 governs the lease of land for mineral activities, normally on annual rent; the miner may instead negotiate a transfer of land use rights from the existing users. The land procedures are explained in How foreign-invested companies access land and Land recovery, compensation and non-use.

Article 8 of Law No. 54/2024/QH15 adds the community dimension. Localities and residents where minerals are mined share in the benefits through the State budget and infrastructure, and the miner must support affected households, including with vocational training, and give priority to local labour. Those obligations are enforced through the licence and the investment registration, and in practice they shape the social licence to operate as much as any approval.

The Law on Geology and Minerals 2024

Law No. 54/2024/QH15 on Geology and Minerals was passed on 29 November 2024 and took effect on 1 July 2025, replacing the Law on Minerals 2010. It extends beyond mining to geological surveys and data. For an investor the core chapters are those on mineral planning and mineral areas (including the areas where mineral activity is prohibited or temporarily prohibited under Article 26, the small and dispersed areas under Article 27 and the national mineral reserve areas under Articles 28 to 34), exploration (Articles 37 to 52), mining of Groups I, II and III (Articles 53 to 66), salvage mining (Articles 67 to 71), Group IV fill materials (Articles 72 to 74), processing (Articles 77 and 78), environmental protection and mine closure (Articles 79 to 85), the fee for granting mining rights (Articles 98 and 99) and auctions of mining rights (Articles 100 to 106). State management responsibilities are in Article 107 and the licensing authorities in Article 108.

Four features distinguish the 2024 law from its predecessor. It classifies minerals by use into four groups rather than by the old categories, and lets the licensing authority depend on the group (Article 6). It creates a light regime for Group IV fill materials, mined without an exploration licence (Article 73). It introduces mineral recovery within construction projects, so that a developer may use or sell minerals uncovered in the course of building works after registration. And it moves the fee for granting mining rights to an annual payment calculated on the reserves in the licence and later settled against actual output (Articles 98 and 99). The detailed rules on each are in Mineral groups, licensing and auctions and Exploration and mining licences.

The 2025 amendment and Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP

Within six months of the law taking effect, the National Assembly amended it. Law No. 147/2025/QH15 was passed on 11 December 2025 and took effect on 1 January 2026. Its main changes were to move licensing of Groups II, III and IV, and of Group I in small and dispersed areas, to provincial People's Committee chairpersons; to widen the areas in which mining rights are granted without auction, including areas needed for energy security, defence and strategic minerals, materials for national, public-investment and public-private partnership projects, and feedstock for operating processing plants; to permit Group III construction materials to be licensed for specified public projects without reference to the provincial mineral management plan; to allow sampling to test processing technology; and to place rare earths under a closed value-chain regime in which exploration, mining and processing are linked and raw rare-earth ore may not be exported (FAQ 101, FAQ 105). The amending law also replaced the references to a named ministry with a reference to the ministry assigned as focal point to assist the Government in state management of geology and minerals, which allowed the later transfer to MOIT without a further amendment.

Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP of 2 July 2025, effective the same day, implements the law in more than 150 articles: the list of minerals in each group, financial capacity, licensing procedures and time limits, reserve recognition, the formula and payment of the fee for granting mining rights, auctions, mine closure and strategic minerals. Decree No. 21/2026/ND-CP of 16 January 2026, also effective on signature, amended Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP to implement Law No. 147/2025/QH15, converted many time limits into working days, rewrote the financial capacity rules and added a new set of articles, 110a to 110g, on rare earths. References in this chapter to Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP are to the decree as so amended.

Who regulates: the transfer to the Ministry of Industry and Trade

From the 2025 merger of ministries until 14 September 2026, geology and minerals were managed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, which had absorbed the former Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Decree No. 351/2026/ND-CP moved state management of geology and minerals to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) with effect from 15 September 2026, the same date on which State management of industrial parks moved from the Ministry of Finance to MOIT under Government Resolution No. 66.25/2026/NQ-CP. The Vietnam Department of Geology and Minerals moved with the function, and MOIT now issues Group I exploration and mining licences, runs ministry-level auctions, keeps the national geological and mineral database and, through the National Mineral Reserve Assessment Council, recognises exploration results for ministry-licensed areas (Article 51). MOIT already set the export lists and standards for Group I and industrial minerals and regulated processing, so the transfer brings licensing, processing and trade under one ministry.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment keeps land administration and environmental protection, so the environmental impact assessment, the environmental licence and the rehabilitation deposit for a mine remain within its system and that of the provinces (FAQ 89). The Ministry of Construction sets the export list and standards for construction minerals. The Ministry of Finance and its Tax Department collect natural resources tax, the fee for granting mining rights and corporate income tax. The Prime Minister approves the national mineral planning, the prohibited areas delineated by the provinces, the non-auction areas within the ministry's remit and every rare-earth licence. Forms and decisions issued before 15 September 2026 in the name of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment remain valid; applications in progress are continued by MOIT.

Provincial People's Committees

Provinces have always mattered in Vietnamese mining because they control land, roads, water and local order. Since 1 January 2026 they also license most mines by number. Under Article 108 as amended by Law No. 147/2025/QH15, the chairperson of the provincial People's Committee issues, extends, re-issues, adjusts, accepts the surrender of, approves the transfer of and revokes licences for Group II, Group III and Group IV minerals, for Group I minerals in the small and dispersed areas that the ministry has delineated and announced, and for salvage mining. Where a licensed area spans two or more provinces, the province holding the largest share of the area decides after consulting the others. The provincial People's Committee also recognises exploration results for the licences it grants (Article 51(2)), delineates and submits for the Prime Minister's approval the prohibited and temporarily prohibited areas (Article 26(4)), approves the non-auction areas within its remit (Article 100), organises local auctions and approves mine closure for its licences.

Dossiers are received and appraised by the provincial specialised department designated for minerals. Following the 2025 reorganisation that function sat in the provincial Department of Agriculture and Environment; some provinces may re-assign it after the central transfer to MOIT, and an applicant should confirm the receiving department before filing. Provinces also levy the environmental protection fee on minerals within the national frame, so the cost of a quarry can differ from one province to the next.

Other laws that apply to a mining project

The minerals law is the starting point, not the whole of the framework. A foreign investor forms its company and registers its project under Law No. 143/2025/QH15 on Investment (The Investment Registration Certificate). Environmental approvals come from Law No. 72/2020/QH14 on Environmental Protection, land from the Land Law 2024, and the fiscal charges from the natural resources tax, corporate income tax and export duty laws. Radioactive minerals, and the radioactive by-products of some rare-earth ores, also fall under the Law on Atomic Energy. Licensing must follow the mineral planning: the national plan for 2021 to 2030 with a vision to 2050 was approved by Decision No. 866/QD-TTg of 2023, and the provincial plans cover Group III and Group IV minerals.

Foreign participation

Article 53 of the law allows a mining licence to be granted to an enterprise established under the Law on Enterprises or a cooperative, and Article 37 allows an exploration licence to be granted to the same entities and also to a foreign enterprise that has a representative office or branch in Vietnam. A foreign investor that intends to mine therefore forms a Vietnamese company, and because that company will be more than 50% foreign-owned in most cases, it first needs an Investment Registration Certificate, which a domestic investor does not (FAQ 106). Mineral exploration and mining are conditional business lines, and the investor should check the market-access list in Appendix I of Decree No. 96/2026/ND-CP for the specific mineral before structuring (Market access for foreign investors).

Two further restrictions bear more heavily on foreign investors. Article 65 requires a foreign investor in strategic and important minerals to meet the market-access rules of the investment law and to accept the State's direction of the activity, and Decree No. 193/2025/ND-CP provides that foreign investors in the exploration of such minerals are identified under intergovernmental agreements, with priority in granting mining rights to domestic enterprises that cooperate with foreign investors in processing. Rare earths are reserved for enterprises the State designates or permits. Those rules are explained in Strategic minerals, rare earths and exports.