Vietnam: Are officials and public employees permitted to sell products online?

Selling online is also quite easy; you can just use your free time to post items for sale on social networks, and when someone needs to buy, you just need to import the goods to sell. However, this job sometimes requires a lot of time for consulting, responding to comments or confirming customer orders. The question is, are officials and public employees prohibited from selling online according to Vietnam’s current regulations?

According to Article 20 of the Law on Officials 2008 of Vietnam, officials may not deal with affairs related to production and business and personnel work specified in the Anti-Corruption Law and the Law on Practice of Thrift and Combat of Wastefulness and other jobs as prescribed by law and competent agencies.

Specifically, according to Article 37 of the Anti-corruption Law 2005 and Clause 2 Article 18 of the Law on Enterprises 2014 of Vietnam, officials must not set up, participate in the setting up of, or participate in the management and administration of, private enterprises, limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, partnership companies, cooperatives, private hospitals, private school and/or private scientific research establishments, etc. but only participate in the establishment of household businesses or contribute capital to joint stock companies as a shareholder.

Concurrently, according to Point dd Clause 2 Article 28 of Decree No. 40/2018/ND-CP of Vietnam’s Government, officials must not participate in MLM.

Thus, the above regulations do not prohibit officials and public employees from selling products online. However, according to section 3.c of the Directive No. 26/CT-TTg in 2016 on strengthening discipline in state administrative agencies at all levels, officials and public employees are not allowed to use working time for private work. Therefore, online sales are only accepted if it does not consume the working time.

- Nguyen Trinh -

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