Circular 17/2026 (issued 19 May 2026) amends Circular 22/2013 – the circular governing registration and change-registration of foreign loans and international bond issuances guaranteed by the Government.
Old bottleneck
Until just recently, any Vietnamese enterprise borrowing abroad or issuing international bond under a government guarantee was required to work with the Foreign Exchange Management Department at the central State Bank in Hanoi, for the initial registration, and again for every material amendment to the loan or the issuance. For borrowers and issuers headquartered outside Hanoi, that meant remote coordination with a central office for what are often routine transactions. Files also had no hard closure rule, so incomplete applications could sit unresolved for months.
What changed
Decentralization
Authority to confirm registration and change registration now sits with the Director of the regional State Bank branch where the borrower or bond issuer has its registered office. Borrowers and issuers in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, or anywhere else outside Hanoi no longer need to route these transactions through the central office. If a borrower/an issuer later moves its registered office across provinces, the old branch must transfer the complete file to the new branch within 2 working days of receiving a request.
Firm timeline
Once a complete file is received, the State Bank has 5 working days to issue its confirmation. If the file is incomplete, the State Bank has 4 working days to issue a written supplementation request – after which the clock resets from zero. The new rule closes the loop, if the borrower fails to complete its file within 60 days of that notice, the application is formally closed. This eliminates the grey zone where incomplete files sat indefinitely with no resolution.
Updated forms
The registration file is now consolidated to four items – the application form, the Ministry of Finance guarantee letter, the competent authority approval for the underlying project or business plan, and the signed loan agreement or bond issuance documents. The application forms themselves have been replaced (new Annexes 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B). Old-form submissions will no longer be accepted, so any pending or upcoming filing should use the new templates.
