The Deputy Minister of Health, Do Xuan Tuyen, has officially signed and enacted Decision No. 1644/QD-BYT, promulgating 3 amended and supplemented administrative procedures within the food safety sector. This executive action serves to operationalize the Government’s Resolution No. 21/2026/NQ-CP and Decree No. 15/2018/ND-CP. The cornerstone of this updated regulatory framework features the comprehensive decentralization of marketing authorization and advertising content approvals for dietary supplements from central state organs to localized provincial authorities.
The documented decentralization parameters, additive regulatory simplification roadmaps, and administrative training strategies include:
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Decentralization of Advertising Content Registration to Localities:
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Jurisdictional Shift: Effective July 1, 2026, the administrative procedure titled “Registration of advertising content for dietary supplements” (Procedure Code: 1.006.424) will be entirely transferred from the central Vietnam Food Administration (VFA) under the Ministry of Health to the Chairpersons of provincial-level People’s Committees for evaluation and issuance.
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Reform Scaling Metrics: Dr. Chu Quoc Thinh, Director General of the VFA, confirmed that to date, 16 out of 19 food safety-related administrative procedures historically managed by the Ministry of Health have been decentralized. This systematic shift is engineered to minimize regulatory bottlenecks and optimize time and cost-efficiencies for enterprises.
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Simplification Roadmaps for Product Registration and Food Additive Criteria:
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At the central government tier, the Ministry of Health will maintain and streamline 2 essential verification tracks: “Registration of product declarations for imported dietary supplements” (Procedure Code: 1.001411) and “Registration of product declarations for domestically manufactured dietary supplements” (Procedure Code: 1.001422).
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Abolition of Additive Constraints: Beginning July 1, 2027, regulators will permanently abolish specific compliance mandates linked to “mixed food additives with novel functionalities, food additives excluded from the approved registry, or additives deployed outside statutory parameters specified by the Ministry of Health” within these two product registration tracks. Instead, additive management will transition exclusively to a standardized permitted registry aligned with global practices, undergoing periodic updates to accelerate product time-to-market.
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Capacity Building and Transitional Training for Local Regulatory Officers:
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To ensure operational continuity ahead of the July 1 enforcement timeline, the VFA orchestrated a nationwide virtual capacity-building conference on June 10 tailored for provincial regulatory officers. The intensive sessions provided detailed technical guidance on evaluating dossiers, issuing advertising verification certificates, analyzing frequent non-compliance case studies, and addressing localized logistical bottlenecks.
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These structural adjustments align with the strategic long-term drafting of the amended Law on Food Safety and the Government’s broader master plan to consolidate food safety management into a unified single-window agency framework.
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