Scenario: a foreign agribusiness wants to buy 500 hectares of farmland in the Mekong Delta for a processing complex, budgeting the purchase like a land deal at home. The plan fails at the first legal check: under the Land Law 31/2024/QH15, foreign-invested economic organizations may not receive transfers of agricultural land use rights. Land is the gate — not the ownership ratio.
The land gate: what foreign investors cannot do
The Land Law 31/2024/QH15 (effective 1 August 2024) keeps a clear line: economic organizations with foreign investment capital cannot receive transfer of agricultural land use rights from domestic holders. This single rule reshapes every agricultural investment structure — the question is never ‘how much land can we buy’ but ‘through which lawful channel can we access land’.
The lawful channels are: leasing land from the State for the project; subleasing land in industrial parks or clusters for processing facilities; and cooperating with domestic partners who hold land use rights — with the cooperation structured so the foreign party does not in substance acquire what the law forbids it to acquire.
Conditions that actually decide the project
- Land use planning: the project must fit the approved land use plan — agricultural land cannot be repurposed for processing facilities without planning conformity and conversion approval.
- Investment procedures: the project needs investment approval/registration, with land demand assessed as part of the dossier.
- Environmental file: processing plants (seafood, feed, fertilizer-adjacent) face wastewater and waste dossiers that routinely take longer than the land procedures.
- Conditional sub-sectors: fertilizer production, plant protection products and veterinary drugs each carry their own conditional licensing on top of the land and investment layers.
The capital ratio question, answered honestly
No single published foreign ownership ratio governs ‘agriculture and fisheries’ as a whole — the sector is a bundle of sub-sectors, each with its own market access conditions (Article 8, Investment Law 143/2025/QH15) and licensing. Investors waste time negotiating equity percentages when the binding constraints are land access channels and sectoral licenses. Structure the land first, license second, and let the equity ratio follow the commercial negotiation within the lawful frame.
Frequently asked questions
1. Can a foreign-invested company buy farmland in Vietnam?
No — it may not receive transfers of agricultural land use rights; access is through State lease, sublease in parks/clusters, or lawful cooperation models.
2. Can we lease agricultural land directly from farmers?
Direct private leasing of agricultural land use rights to foreign-invested entities is not the lawful channel; use State allocation/lease procedures or park subleases.
3. Is there a foreign ownership cap for agribusiness?
No single published ratio for the sector as a whole; each sub-sector follows its own market access conditions and licenses.
4. What about seafood processing in coastal areas?
Processing facilities typically sit in industrial parks or clusters via sublease; the aquaculture farming itself follows fisheries law licensing.
5. Which dossier takes longest?
In practice, the environmental dossier for processing plants — not the investment registration — is the critical path.