Opening the door to license gold bar production
The State Bank has just announced a Draft Circular providing comprehensive guidance on gold jewelry production, fine arts, gold bar production and trading, and gold import and export activities.
This move aims to concretize Decree No. 24/2012/ND-CP (amended and supplemented in Decree No. 232/2025/ND-CP), aiming to eliminate monopoly and create a fair playground for gold trading units.
The biggest change of the draft is that for the first time, the draft adds procedures for granting a license to produce gold bars - a type of document that has never existed before.
Subjects: Enterprises and commercial banks can submit applications for a license.
The dossier includes: Application, documents proving charter capital, internal regulations on production processes, and documents for post-inspection remediation (if any).
New regulations on import and export limits
Units licensed to produce gold bars must also complete procedures to apply for annual gold import and export limits and submit documents to the State Bank of Vietnam no later than November 15 every year. After that, the unit will continue to ask for permission for each import/export on the basis of the approved limit.
The Council for the development and adjustment of limits will be established by the SBV (chaired by a Deputy Governor) to advise the Governor on the allocation of the total limit.
Sharp reduction in administrative procedures
The draft has significantly shortened the time for processing documents and expanded the submission method, creating more convenience for businesses.
Specifically, the time to issue certificates of eligibility for gold jewelry and handicrafts production has been sharply shortened, from 30 days to only 10 days.
Similarly, the time for amending and supplementing documents was also reduced from 15 days to 5 days.
For business licenses for buying and selling gold bars, the processing time is reduced from 30 days to 20 days.
Finally, the procedure for granting temporary gold import and re-export licenses was also shortened, from 15 days to 10 days.
Abolish unnecessary conditions and strengthen supervision
Abolish the condition of importing raw gold: The draft proposes to abolish the condition of granting a license to import raw gold to subjects such as jewelry gold production enterprises, FDI enterprises, foreign processing enterprises or foreign gold mining investment.
Remove unnecessary documents, for example, "production and business plan copies" for FDI enterprises applying to import raw gold.
The draft adds a new chapter on connection and information provision. Licensed units must connect the electronic data system with the SBV, provide timely, accurate and continuous information about personal identification cards, tax codes, volumes, transaction values, input/output raw material information, and gold import-export activities. All data must be stored for at least 10 years.
The draft Circular is currently being widely consulted before the SBV completes and officially issues it.
