Most of Việt Nam’s technology legislation this year has been about permission: who may operate a data exchange, who must label synthetic content, who needs a licence to sell cryptography. Two circulars signed on the same day in August are about something rarer — money, and what happens to it when state-funded research fails.
What the documents are
Thông tư 48/2026/TT-BKHCN and Thông tư 49/2026/TT-BKHCN were both signed in Hà Nội on 1 August 2026 by Bộ trưởng Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ Vũ Hải Quân, and both took effect on the day of signing — Điều 23 khoản 1 of the first, Điều 28 khoản 1 of the second. Same-day commencement is unusual but permitted for instruments adopted under the shortened law-making procedure, and several 2026 technology instruments have used it.
The two are a matched pair covering the Chương trình khoa học, công nghệ và đổi mới sáng tạo quốc gia đặc biệt về công nghệ chiến lược — the special national programme for strategic technology, approved by Quyết định 1493/QĐ-TTg of 6 August 2026, five days after the circulars that govern its paperwork.
Thông tư 48, proposed by the Vụ trưởng Vụ Khoa học Kỹ thuật và Công nghệ, runs to 24 articles in four chapters plus nineteen forms. It covers the front end: how tasks are advertised, who may bid, how councils score, how contracts are signed. Thông tư 49, proposed by the director of the executive agency of the Quỹ Phát triển khoa học và công nghệ Quốc gia (NAFOSTED), runs to 29 articles in five chapters plus two annexes. It covers the money: budgeting, disbursement, payment, settlement and what happens on failure.
Their legal bases are the Luật Khoa học, công nghệ và đổi mới sáng tạo số 93/2025/QH15, the Luật Công nghệ cao số 133/2025/QH15 (in force since 1 July 2026, replacing the 2008 law), the Luật Ngân sách nhà nước số 89/2025/QH15, and four decrees — Nghị định 260/2026/NĐ-CP of 30 June 2026 detailing the high-technology law, Nghị định 225/2026/NĐ-CP on the ministry’s own structure, and Nghị định 265/2025/NĐ-CP and 267/2025/NĐ-CP of 14 October 2025 on science funding and on programmes and tasks.
What changes
The state will pay all of it — for the right kind of risk. Điều 4 of Thông tư 49 sets two ceilings. The budget covers up to 100 per cent where the task is commissioned by the state (đặt hàng), where it aims at core or platform technology of special importance to national technological self-reliance, defence or security, or where it carries high scientific and technological risk. It covers up to 70 per cent where the goal is a strategic-technology product with realistic prospects of application, transfer or commercialisation; the remainder comes from counterpart funding. Six criteria steer the choice between them, including the maturity of the technology, the degree of risk, the level of business participation and the contribution to national competitiveness — criteria, not a formula.
Counterpart funding does not have to be cash. Điều 5 lets a host organisation count machinery, production lines, laboratories, test facilities and technical infrastructure; intellectual property rights, technology-use rights and software; and salaries paid to staff from lawful non-state sources. ODA, concessional foreign loans, grants and anything already funded from the state budget are excluded, only the share actually used on the task counts, and the same asset cannot be pledged twice across projects.
Pay is set by job position, with published ceilings. Form BM-03-TC-CNCL in Phụ lục II lists maximum monthly remuneration in million đồng: Tổng công trình sư (chief designer) 300; chủ nhiệm nhiệm vụ 150; thư ký khoa học 60; thành viên chính 120 for research, design, fabrication, integration and testing and 100 for commercialisation, technology transfer, IP, standards and market development; thành viên 90 and 70 on the same split; technicians and support staff 45. An individual’s budget is monthly ceiling × months × percentage of time; a day rate is the monthly ceiling divided by 26. Experts are hired at negotiated market rates capped at the task leader’s level, and exceptionally at the chief designer’s level where the host organisation justifies it and the council agrees.
Money moves against milestones, not invoices. Điều 12 applies khoán chi đến sản phẩm cuối cùng — a lump sum to the final product — measured at each mốc đánh giá. An evaluation council rules on each milestone; that ruling is the basis for paying the tranche and for releasing the next one. A milestone judged not met is not paid at all under the full lump-sum method, or paid only for the verified portion under the partial method. A contingency line may be budgeted but is capped at 10 per cent of the state-budget estimate, and unspent contingency goes back.
Two teams may race, and one may be cut. Where the managing agency selects two or more organisations to pursue independent research options toward the same target, Điều 13 has each option separately budgeted, contracted, paid and settled. If one is terminated on a milestone verdict, the organisation is paid for milestones already completed, gets nothing for work not done, and returns unused state money.
Failure is not automatically a debt. Điều 26 is the clause that matters most. Where a task falls within the accepted-risk cases of Điều 35 and Điều 36 of Nghị định 267/2025/NĐ-CP, the host organisation does not have to repay state funds spent on the approved purpose, content and scope. Repayment applies only to money used improperly; fraud or deliberate breach is handled under the ordinary law.
Procurement becomes the researcher’s call. Under Điều 15, the host organisation decides and is answerable for its own choice of contractors and suppliers when buying or renting equipment, goods and services for the task, subject to procurement law, technical requirements, transparency and conflict-of-interest rules. Điều 14 lets it shift money between cost items inside a work package, or between packages inside the same milestone, without asking — provided the milestone’s outputs still land. Crossing milestones, or changing the totals or the funding mix, requires a report and a decision.
How a task is awarded
Thông tư 48 publishes the plan — scope, indicative state-funding ceiling, deadline and channel — on the national science, technology and innovation management platform and the ministry portal. Bidders file through that platform, the national document exchange, post or the counter. Four bars apply: an unfinished acceptance report on an earlier state-funded task, unreturned recovered funds, less than a year since a suspension for breach, or current suspension, unexpired administrative penalty or criminal proceedings. The agency confirms dossier validity within five working days.
A five-member Tổ đánh giá năng lực physically inspects facilities, staff and — where counterpart funding is promised — finances. A Hội đồng xét tài trợ, đặt hàng of 9 to 15 members then scores: at least half must be subject-matter experts drawn from the ministry’s expert database, at least one must come from finance or economics, at least one must have real production, commercialisation or market experience, and overseas Vietnamese and foreign experts are expressly encouraged. Each task gets two designated reviewers. An organisation that originally proposed a commissioned task gets a 10 per cent bonus on its average score if at least two valid bids compete. Results go out within three working days; the winner has 15 working days to finalise its file; the approval decision is due within 60 days of the submission deadline; the contract — paper or electronic — follows within ten working days.
This is not theoretical. Thông báo 31/TB-NAFOSTED of 30 August 2026, issued on the strength of Quyết định 3626/QĐ-BKHCN of the day before, opened the first competition under these rules: mastering the technology for a fleet of autonomous mobile robots for urban sanitation. Dossiers were accepted from 3 September to 17:00 on 14 September 2026 through the STM system at stm.mst.gov.vn. On the circular’s own clock, the award decision falls due in mid-November.
Who is affected, and what to do
Universities, research institutes and — importantly — enterprises bidding for strategic-technology work are the direct audience, along with the ministries, central agencies and provincial People’s Committees that act as managing agencies. Three practical consequences stand out. First, counterpart funding must now be documented as value, with depreciation schedules, lease contracts, valuations of intangibles and payroll records; the managing agency may require an independent audit to verify it. Second, budgets must be built as work packages tied to milestones, because that is the unit of payment. Third, everything is tracked on the national platform, with a stated principle of risk-based monitoring and non-interference in the host organisation’s internal finances — the trade for that autonomy is timely, truthful reporting.
Open questions
Neither circular repeals the general regime outright. Thông tư 48 instead deletes the strategic-technology wording from Thông tư 36/2025/TT-BKHCN and Thông tư 44/2025/TT-BKHCN phrase by phrase, and Thông tư 49 says only that where it differs from Thông tư 38/2025 and 39/2025, it wins. Practitioners will be reading four circulars side by side for some time. Proposals already lodged with NAFOSTED under a funding notice issued before 1 August 2026 stay under the old Thông tư 44/2025.
The boundary of “accepted risk” is the untested part. It is defined not here but in Điều 35 and Điều 36 of Nghị định 267/2025/NĐ-CP, and the first real test will come when a well-run project misses its milestone and the council has to decide whether that was research or failure to perform. The 100-versus-70 per cent split rests on six qualitative criteria with no published weighting, which leaves genuine discretion at approval. And the programme’s own approving decision arriving five days after its procedural rulebook is a reminder of how fast this area is being built.
This post is general information about Vietnamese law, not legal advice.
Sources
- Thông tư 48/2026/TT-BKHCN — official record, Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ
- Thông tư 48/2026/TT-BKHCN — full text (PDF)
- Thông tư 49/2026/TT-BKHCN — official record, Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ
- Thông tư 49/2026/TT-BKHCN — full text (PDF)
- Kế hoạch đặt hàng nhiệm vụ nghiên cứu và phát triển công nghệ chiến lược (Thông báo 31/TB-NAFOSTED) — Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ
- Thông báo kế hoạch đặt hàng — Quỹ Phát triển khoa học và công nghệ Quốc gia (NAFOSTED)
- Cơ chế tài chính mới cho nghiên cứu và phát triển công nghệ chiến lược — Báo Công Thương
- Đột phá về cơ chế tài chính cho công nghệ chiến lược — Báo Tuyên Quang
- Đã có toàn văn Luật Công nghệ cao 2025, số 133/2025/QH15 — LuatVietnam