Preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment (“PEIA”) is an essential document for licensing new investment projects in Vietnam. In an investment licensing procedure, the PEIA shall be submitted in the application for (i) issuance of an investment in-principle approval (“IIA“), or (ii) issuance of an investment registration certificate (“IRC”) in case the IIA is not required. The competent authority shall consider and assess the PEIA and other documents of the application to decide whether to issue the IIA or the IRC.

Investment projects subject to the PEIA

Projects subject to the PEIA include investment projects in which the investors have to prepare an environmental impact assessment report (“EIAR”) as prescribed Decree No. 40/2019/ND-CP, and falling into one of the following cases:

• Public investment projects (except for the emergency public investment projects of the national target program, component projects of a project to which decisions on investment guidelines, on investment preparation tasks and on planning tasks have been issued by the competent authority);
• Public-priavate partnership projects;
• Investment projects subject to the approval for their investment guidelines as prescribed by the law on investment;
• Investment projects subject to the issuance of the IRC, except for the case where an IRC is issued at the request of the investor.

Basic matters in the PEIA

The PEIA will:

• Assess the conformity of the project location with the national environmental protection strategy, national environmental protection planning and environmental protection contents in regional planning, provincial planning and other relevant planning;
• Identify and predict major environmental impacts of the project on the basis of project’s scale, production technology and location;
• Identify sensitive environmental factors presenting at the project’s location according to the location selection methods (if any);
• Analyze, assess and select a scheme regarding the project‘s scale, production technology, technology for waste treatment, investment location, and solutions for reducing environmental impacts;
• Determine major environmental issues and environmental impacts during the environmental impact assessment.