Cases where all scholarship reimbursement costs and training costs are removed
Decree 51/2026/ND-CP was issued by the Government on February 2, 2026, effective from March 26, 2026, amending and supplementing regulations on scholarship reimbursement and training costs according to Decree 143/2013/ND-CP.
Article 3 of Decree 51/2026/ND-CP has added Article 7a after Article 7 of Decree 143/2013/ND-CP on deleting or exempting reimbursement costs.
The law stipulates the elimination of all reimbursement costs if the learner has died or is declared dead by the Court according to legal regulations.
Exemption of reimbursement costs in 3 cases:
The learner is certified by a competent medical facility as not healthy enough to work;
Students who have not completed enough working time as committed but are subsequently transferred, rotated, assigned, or transferred to another position by competent authorities;
Students cannot comply with the transfer due to objective, force majeure reasons and being considered and approved by competent authorities.
If competent authorities can exploit necessary information from specialized databases or from state agencies, learners or families do not need to provide these documents, just provide information for comparison.
The procedure for eliminating or waiving reimbursement costs is also clearly stipulated. The competent authority will notify the learner or family of the reimbursement obligation.
If subject to the case of being erased or exempted from reimbursement costs, learners or families need to submit documents within 20 working days from the date of notification.
After receiving sufficient valid dossiers, the competent authority will consider and issue a decision within 20 working days. This decision will be sent to the learner or family and publicly posted on the electronic information page of the competent state agency.
Regulations on training using state budget
Point b, Clause 2, Article 1 of Decree 143/2013/ND-CP amended and supplemented by Article 1 of Decree 51/2026/ND-CP stipulates:
b) Learners are allowed to participate in domestic training programs using state budget funds or according to training order projects approved by the Prime Minister using state budget funds.
Thus, the scope includes two groups: Training using the state budget in general; Training according to a project but using the state budget, the common point is that both have funding from the budget.
According to the old regulations, only mentioning learners participating in training programs according to training order projects approved by the Prime Minister without mentioning funding sources, the scope is narrower and does not implicitly determine the use of the state budget.
Officially extend the deadline for payment of compensation money
Clause 1, Article 7 of Decree 43/2013/ND-CP is amended and supplemented by Article 2 of Decree 51/2026/ND-CP, as follows:
“1. No later than 120 (one hundred twenty) days from the date of receiving the decision of the competent state agency, the learner or the learner's family in Vietnam is responsible for fully paying the amount to be compensated”.
According to new regulations, the deadline for fulfilling the obligation to reimburse expenses has been adjusted from 60 days to 120 days from the date the learner or learner's family receives a decision from a competent state agency.
Extending the duration of obligations helps learners and their families have more conditions to arrange finances, reducing pressure in the process of repaying the amount to be reimbursed. Compared to previous regulations, the new deadline is doubled, creating more flexibility but still ensuring full reimbursement responsibility according to the decision.
