National Assembly Passes Advertisement Law
21 August 2012
Vietnam’s National Assembly has approved the Law on Advertisement No. 16/2012/QH13 on June 21, 2012. According to lawyers at Aliat Legal in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, the law will both provide advantages to advertisers and promote consumer protection.
Aliat reports that as per the new law, the following good and services are banned from advertisement: (i) good or services prohibited from trading by laws; (ii) tobacco; (iii) wine with a content of 15% alcohol or more; (iv) alternative milk products replacing human breast milk for children less than 24 months of age; supplemental nutrition products for kids less than six months of age; and artificial nipples (bottles and pacifiers); (v) prescription drugs or over the counter drugs when their usage are recommended to be limited or under supervision of doctor; (vi) aphrodisiac goods; (vii) shotguns and bullets, sport weapons and violence inciting products, and (viii) other prohibited products, goods and services.
One positive point is that the law allows increasing advertising up to 15% of available space in newspapers and up to 20% of space in magazines, time up to 10% in audio or visual media and up to 5% in total time volume of television channels, the firm says. “Crawl advertisements at the bottom of the screen in the visual press is also allowable, provided the height of the crawl is not higher than 10% of the screen and crawling time is not included in the advertisement time,” the firm said.
“As per the new law, advertisers and advertisement service providers and advertisement issuers shall take joint liability for advertised products,” the firm says. “This regulation is expected to bring more protection to consumers and contribute to the elimination of false advertisements.”
The law becomes effective January 1, 2013.
