Vietnam Chemical Regulation Overhaul Expected in Two Months

New chemical control legislation has been submitted to the government for signing and is expected within two months.

The legislation, which will replace the Law on Chemicals from 2007 and some secondary legislation, has a "lot of changes", Mr Viet Thang Le of the Vietnam Chemicals Agency told ChemCon Asia 2017 in Beijing this week.

Expected changes include a greater emphasis on inspection and reduced emphasis on licensing and new regulations on label sizes.

However, Mr Le said he couldn't say when Vietnam’s National Chemicals Inventory and database would go live. The current draft, dated 15 March 2017, includes nearly 5,000 chemicals.

About 800 entries are marked as having either having public comments collected after 30 November 2016 or from a survey from the Vietnam Chemicals Agency, suggesting considerable work still needs to be done. Mr Le acknowledges that the lack of an inventory creates "difficulties for sound chemical management".

When the inventory is released, he said, it will be accompanied by a roadmap for using the data.