Decree 43/2017/ND-CP: NEW REGULATIONS ON GOODS LABELLING

adminquantri - August 11, 2017

On April 14, 2017, the Government issued Decree No. 43/2017/ND-CP on goods labeling (“Decree 43”) replacing Decree No. 89/2006/ND-CP of the Government dated August 30th, 2006 (“Decree 89”). Decree 43 takes effect as of June 1st, 2017.

Compared with Decree 89, Decree 43 has some new features as follows:

  1. Governing scope

Decree 43 provides details on objects which are out of its governing scope. Compared with previous Decree 89, the following goods are out of governing scope of Decree 43, though they were regulated by Decree 89: Exported goods not for domestic use, transit commodities, petrol and oil, gas (LPG, CNG, LNG), liquid, bulk cement without commercial packaging in containers, tankers; and used goods.

  1. A number of provisions aiming at dealing with difficulties faced by enterprises

In order to deal with difficulties faced by, facilitate activities of and cut down the expense for enterprises in relation to goods labelling, Decree 43 provides that:

(i) Imported spare parts for repair and warranty services, not for sale; imported raw materials for use in domestic manufacturing, not for sale in the market, are exempted from additional labeling;

(ii) Goods for export which are eventually not exported and put into domestic circulation are not required to change their entire labels, but only subject to additional labelling;

(iii) Enterprises are allowed to determine and label themselves the origin of goods in compliance with legal provisions on origin of goods and international treaties to which Vietnam is a party;

(iv) Enterprises manufacturing goods of the same quality standards in different locations are allowed to indicate only the name and address of the organization or individual responsible for such goods, and no longer required to indicate addresses of all manufacturing locations as under the previous regulations;

  1. A number of provisions to protect consumers

Decree 43 also contains provisions to protect consumers’ interests against smuggled and counterfeit goods, particularly:

(i) Regulations on labelling of manufacture and expiry dates with respect to portioned and extracted goods to avoid fraud on expiry date thereof;

(ii) For goods imported into Vietnam on which mandatory information in Vietnamese are not presented or presented insufficiently, additional labels containing mandatory information in Vietnamese are required in addition to original labels which must be kept unchanged; and the Vietnamese content must be consistent with that of the original label…

(iii) Additional labels must also be used for goods which cannot be exported or goods returned and put into circulation in the domestic market. In addition, such goods must be marked with the phrase “Được sản xuất tại Việt Nam” (meaning “Made in Vietnam”) in bold letters.

  1. Transitional provision

The transitional provision of Decree 43 provides that those goods labeled in accordance with Decree 89 which had been produced, imported, circulated, or used before the effective date of Decree 43 shall be allowed to continue to be circulated or used until its expiry date.

Goods labels, commercial packaging bearing labels in accordance with Decree 89 which has been manufactured or printed before the effective date of Decree 43 shall continue to be used, but not exceeding 02 years after the effective date of Decree 43.

  1. Supplement and change of Appendices

Decree 43 supplements and changes content of a number of Appendices, namely: Mandatory content of labels by nature of goods (Appendix I); Regulation on goods labelling with respect to quantities (Appendix II); Regulation on labelling of manufacture, expiry and other dates of goods (Appendix III); Regulation on labelling of ingredients, ingredient quantities of goods (Appendix IV) and Regulation on other labelling of specifications, information, warnings about hygiene and safety of goods (Appendix V).

Other Posts