Retention of Documents

When doing business in Vietnam, foreign investors always query about the legal requirements on document retention, especially, retention of contracts. There is no law provision which specifically provides for retention of contracts after their expiration. Generally, there are statutory retention periods applied to specific types of documents/records, including accounting documents, documents containing State secrets and documents created and filed at State agencies.

Based on the types of documents, retention periods for documents/records may be categorized as follows:

1. Accounting documents (accounting records, detailed accounting books and overall accounting books, financial statements, budget statements and consolidated budget statements and other documents related to accounting work, including contracts, administrative accounting reports etc.): The retention periods for accounting documents are different depending on the types of documents and include five years, 10 years and permanent retention periods.

Specifically, accounting documents to be retained for at least five years include accounting records that are not directly recorded to accounting books and financial statements, such as collection notes and payment notes which are not enclosed with accounting documents, accounting documents serving management of an accounting unit that are not directly recorded in accounting books, and financial statements.

Accounting documents that must be retained for at least 10 years include accounting records directly recorded in accounting books and financial statements and statements, detailed accounting books, general accounting books, monthly, quarterly and annual financial statements, and other documents directly recorded in accounting books and financial statements, etc.

Accounting documents to be permanently retained (retained for more than 10 years until they are naturally destroyed) include historical accounting documents or those of economic, national security, or national defense.

1. Documents containing private information (for example, personal data provided by employees): The retention duration will be as agreed by the parties.

2. Documents containing State secrets: The retention periods for state secrets are 30 years, 20 years or 10 years, depending on the degree of their security.

3. Other contracts that do not fall into one of the above documents: The retention period shall be decided by the company itself.