On September 17, 2025, the Customs Department issued Official Letter No. 24885/CHQ-NVTHQ providing guidance on the application of value-added tax (VAT) for unprocessed food products.
Detailed instructions are as follows:
1. Products considered as “unprocessed food” or only ordinarily pre-processed
This category includes:
- Products from cultivation, plantation, livestock farming, or aquaculture that are produced or caught by organizations/individuals and sold domestically or imported, provided that they have not been processed into other products, but only undergone ordinary pre-processing.
- Ordinary pre-processing includes: cleaning, drying, sun-drying, peeling, husking, shelling, breaking into pieces, milling, dehulling, polishing, seed separation, stem removal, cutting, grinding, grain polishing, seed soaking, splitting into parts, deboning, mincing, skinning, crushing, flattening, salting, hermetic canning, cold storage, preservation by gas/chemicals/solutions (e.g., sulfur dioxide, sulfur), and other common preservation methods.
Where it is unclear whether a product falls under this category, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment will base its decision on the production process provided by the taxpayer to determine whether the product qualifies as unprocessed or only ordinarily pre-processed at the stage of sale or import, in accordance with applicable legal provisions.
(According to Article 4.1 of Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP)
2. Applicable value-added tax
- Exempt from VAT (0% rate): Applicable to unprocessed food products or those only ordinarily pre-processed at the stage of importation
- 5% VAT rate: Applicable to the commercial trading of unprocessed or ordinarily pre-processed food products
- 10% VAT rate: Applicable to processed food products upon importation
(According to Articles 4 and 8 of the VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15)
(According to Official Letter No. 24885/CHQ-NVTHQ dated September 17, 2025)
Related Services: Customs clearance procedures
📞 Contact UNI Customs Consulting for free consultation:
📧 Email: uni@eximuni.com
📱 Hotline: (+84) 24-7308-7988 (Hanoi) | (+84) 28-7301-8910 (HCM)