Vietnam's Gold Market Struggles with Decree 232: Balancing Transparency and Convenience
Ms. T., a resident of Ninh Binh province from Ha Nam, has been holding about 3 taels of gold and 14 taels of jewelry gold for many years. She still has handwritten invoices for the 3 taels of gold purchased by her family, but the papers for the jewelry are almost gone.
The issue Ms. T. faces is a common one in Vietnam's gold market: the lack of documents for gold accumulated over time. With the introduction of Decree 232/2025/ND-CP on October 10, 2025, which requires gold buying and selling transactions worth 20 million VND or more per day to be paid through a bank account, the question arises about how to handle old gold that people are holding.
According to Ms. Le Thi Huong Tra, a lecturer at the Institute of Banking Science Research, Banking Academy, it is impossible to require people to present origin documents for all gold assets that have been held for many years. Instead, experts suggest studying the mechanism of inspection and declaration so that old gold can return to the official system when people need to trade.
The goal is to increase transparency in the gold market by linking new gold flows to invoices and transaction data while creating a convenient 'entrance' for the amount of gold that people have held for a long time. Ms. Tra emphasized the importance of shifting from controlling each transaction to monitoring based on data and risk levels.