Project extension is the quiet crisis of Vietnamese investment. Every certificate records an operation period, and every sponsor whose project outlives it faces the same question far later than they should have: what happens when the term runs out. Decree 96/2026/ND-CP, effective 31 March 2026, details Article 44 of the Law on Investment governing the duration of investment projects.
Why project extension is left too late
Operation periods are set at licensing, when the term feels remote and the sponsor is focused on construction. Twenty or fifty years later the same document governs a business that has changed hands, refinanced and expanded – and the expiry date arrives attached to a land lease, a bank facility and a set of customer contracts that all assume continuity.
The consequences of missing it are not administrative. A project whose term has expired cannot lawfully continue, the land position falls away with it, and lenders treat the approaching date as a maturity event long before the regulator does. Sponsors should be reviewing the remaining term whenever they refinance, sell or make a material investment.
What a project extension application must show
Extension is not automatic. The authority examines whether the project remains consistent with planning – the analysis in our planning conformity guide – whether the land position supports a longer term, whether the investor has complied with its obligations to date, and whether the project still meets the conditions that applied when it was licensed, including market access conditions for foreign investors.
Compliance history therefore matters commercially. A project with unresolved schedule slippage, unpaid obligations or an outdated certificate approaches extension from a weak position, which is one more reason the discipline in our IRC adjustment guide pays for itself.
Land is the binding constraint on project extension
The project term and the land term must work together. Extending a project beyond the land lease achieves nothing; extending the land without the project is equally useless. Sponsors should map both dates at the outset of any extension exercise and treat the earlier of the two as the real deadline, as our land lease guide explains.
Where the two are misaligned – a common legacy of projects assembled in stages – the correction usually requires engaging both the investment authority and the land authority, on timetables that do not naturally coincide. Starting eighteen to twenty-four months before expiry is realistic; starting six months before is not.
Extension in transactions
Remaining term is a valuation input, not a footnote. A buyer acquiring a project with eight years left prices differently from one acquiring the same asset with thirty, and lenders size facilities against the shorter of tenor and remaining term. Sellers who secure a project extension before marketing frequently recover far more than the cost of obtaining it, and buyers should make the term a specific diligence line, as our legal due diligence guide sets out.
Project extension FAQs
How long can a project run?
Maximum durations differ by location and sector, with longer terms available in economic zones and for projects with large capital or slow recovery. The certificate records the specific term, and that document governs.
Can an expired project be revived?
The position after expiry is materially worse than before it, and may engage the termination and land recovery rules in our project termination guide. Extension applications belong well before the date, not after.
Does extension affect incentives?
Incentive periods run on their own terms and do not automatically extend with the project. Sponsors should model the two separately using our investment incentives guide. Texts are published via the Ministry of Finance.
A project extension calendar every sponsor should keep
The discipline is simple and almost never practised. Record four dates in one place: the project term from the certificate, the land term from the land instrument, the incentive period end, and the maturity of any facility secured on the project. Review them annually, and act on the earliest.
Working backwards from that earliest date, a project extension exercise needs roughly eighteen to twenty-four months. Six to nine months to regularise the certificate and resolve any compliance history. Three to six months to align the land position where the two terms diverge. And the balance for the application itself and the questions it generates.
Sponsors who keep this calendar treat extension as routine. Those who do not typically discover the issue when a buyer, lender or auditor raises it – at which point the remaining term has already begun to depress the valuation, and the option of a calm, well-prepared application has been lost.
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice for any specific case. Regulations may change – please consult a qualified professional before acting. Should further analysis be required, please contact one of our lawyers below.
