شهادة المنشأ الفيتنامية: أي نموذج يستحقه خطك الملاحي فعلاً

One phrase, two documents that behave differently

Traders use the words "certificate of origin" for two instruments that do different work.

The first is non-preferential. It certifies the country where the goods were made, and it can be issued for any destination in the world. In Vietnam that document is Form B. What Form B does not do is change a rate of duty. It carries no duty benefit anywhere, because it is not attached to any agreement.

The second is preferential. It exists only under a named free trade agreement, and it is the instrument through which a lower rate is claimed. Form D under ATIGA into ASEAN is one. EUR.1 under EVFTA into the European Union is another.

The confusion here is commercial rather than technical. A quotation line that reads "C/O provided" is true whichever of the two is meant. The buyer reads it as the second and receives the first. Nobody has lied and the landed cost is still wrong.

The lanes that travel on Form B

This is the part that decides pricing on a large share of the containers leaving Vietnam for these destinations.

Vietnam has no free trade agreement with Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Fiji or Kiribati. It has none with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain or Oman. Every one of those lanes travels on Form B, and Form B carries no duty benefit.

Read that list against where this trade actually ships. Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Mozambique and Kenya in Africa; Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Kiribati in the Pacific; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in the Gulf. These are ordinary destinations for a Vietnamese consolidator rather than outliers. For each of them the origin document is the non-preferential one, and your duty is whatever your own tariff schedule applies to that HS heading with no agreement in play. Check your own destination against the list of named countries rather than against its region.

That is not a defect in the paperwork and it is not something a better consolidator or a sharper broker repairs. There is no agreement to claim under. The correct response is to build the landed cost on the standard rate from the start, get that figure from your own clearing agent against your HS headings, and stop treating origin documentation as a line that might yet save you something.

The practical test on a quotation is short. If duty relief is implied anywhere in it, ask which agreement it is claimed under and which form will be presented. There is a right answer for every lane, and on these lanes the answer is that there is no agreement and the form is Form B.

Where a preferential form does exist

Where Vietnam does have an agreement, the preferential certificate of origin has a name. The list is finite and worth keeping beside your tariff file:

• Form D: ATIGA, within ASEAN.
• Form E: ACFTA, ASEAN and China.
• Form AK under AKFTA and Form VK under VKFTA, both into Korea.
• Form AJ under AJCEP and Form VJ under VJEPA, both into Japan.
• Form AANZ: Australia and New Zealand.
• Form AI: India.
• Form AHK: Hong Kong.
• Form RCEP.
• Form CPTPP.
• Form VC: Chile.
• Form VI: Israel.
• Form EAV: the Eurasian Economic Union, being Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
• Form S: Laos. Form X: Cambodia.
• Form VN-CU: Cuba.
• EUR.1: the European Union under EVFTA, and EUR.1 UK under UKVFTA.

Two observations on that list.

Korea and Japan each appear twice, under a regional agreement and under a bilateral one. Which of the two a shipment is claimed under is a decision for the party claiming the relief, which is your side of the transaction, and it is taken before the certificate is applied for rather than after the goods have sailed.

The second observation matters more. The existence of a form is not entitlement to it. Preferential origin depends on the destination, on the HS heading of the individual line, and on whether that line satisfies the agreement's rule of origin. It is confirmed per shipment. It is never promised in advance, and a supplier who promises it before seeing your SKU list and your destination is describing something that has not been checked.

The Gulf has one exception now, and it is the UAE

The United Arab Emirates is the newest agreement and the only preferential lane in the Gulf. The Vietnam-UAE CEPA entered into force on 3 February 2026, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued Circular 24/2026/TT-BCT on 5 May 2026 setting out the rules of origin under it.

The instrument is the UAE-VN certificate of origin. Goods may also travel on a self-certification made by an approved exporter, and there is a self-certification route for consignments of no more than USD 500.

Two cautions. The agreement is recent enough that many supplier document lists and freight quotations have not caught up with it, so a UAE buyer may be told nothing preferential is available when a route now exists. And it does not extend along the coast. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are unchanged: no agreement, Form B, no duty benefit. A Gulf distribution business that clears through more than one of these markets is looking at two different answers on the same product.

Who issues the certificate changed in May 2025

Since 5 May 2025, under Decision 1103/QD-BCT of 21 April 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is the sole issuing body for certificates of origin in Vietnam. VCCI stopped issuing them. Form A, Form B, non-preferential certificates, certificates of non-manipulation and GSTP certificates all moved to the ministry.

Use that as a free due diligence test on any Vietnamese supplier you are qualifying. If the document list attached to their quotation, their website or their company profile still names VCCI as the issuer of the certificate of origin, that document predates the change. It says nothing about whether they can ship. It says a good deal about how current the rest of what they have told you is, and about whether anyone there reads the ministry's circulars.

If you hold a supplier document pack older than that, this is worth a five minute check today rather than at the port.

A mixed container can carry more than one origin

A Vietnamese certificate of origin certifies Vietnamese manufacture. Lines manufactured elsewhere cannot travel on one, whatever else is in the container.

A mixed container is built from what the catalogue holds that week, and a small number of lines in a branded FMCG catalogue sold in Vietnam are made elsewhere. Those lines travel under the origin document of their country of manufacture, together with a certificate of non-manipulation issued in Vietnam where the destination customs asks for one. That certificate is now issued by the ministry as well.

The consequence for you is procedural. One container travels as one shipment, with one commercial invoice, one packing list and one bill of lading or seaway bill, and it can still carry more than one origin document. Ask your supplier per SKU rather than per container which country each line was made in, and get it in writing before the booking. The document pack for a mixed load, including the position on lines not made in Vietnam, is set out on the quality page; country of manufacture is declared per SKU on the product page.

Where a line's country of manufacture is only discovered at your port, the argument is no longer about paperwork. It is about a container your broker cannot clear on the documents in front of them.

The document that gets mistaken for a certificate of origin

Several destinations require a conformity certificate obtained in the country of export before the vessel sails. It is issued per consignment, it is not a certificate of origin, and the two are easily confused, so holding one does not stand in for the other.

• Kenya operates PVoC under KEBS.
• Ghana operates G-CAP under the Ghana Standards Authority.

Nigeria works differently. It regulates food, beverages, cosmetics, chemicals and detergents through NAFDAC, and that registration is held by the importer rather than by the exporter, so it sits on your side of the transaction and not with your supplier in Vietnam.

Note what those three lanes have in common with the origin position above: none of them has a trade agreement with Vietnam. So on a Kenyan or Ghanaian load you are handling a Form B that saves you nothing and a per consignment conformity certificate that will stop the shipment if it is missed. The one with no commercial value has to be issued, and the one with real consequences has to be booked into the loading schedule before the doors close, because a certificate that must be issued before departure cannot be obtained once the vessel has left.

What to settle before you book the container

Six things, answered in writing, before an order rather than after a booking.

Which form your lane takes, named specifically, and if it is preferential, which agreement it is claimed under. Which HS headings the claim rests on, because entitlement is decided per heading and not per container. The country of manufacture of every line, per SKU. Whether any line needs a certificate of non-manipulation for your customs. Whether your market requires a per consignment conformity certificate obtained here before sailing, and whether it is already in the loading schedule. And whether the supplier's document list still names VCCI, which tells you when it was last read.

We name the form for the lane in the offer and we say plainly where it is Form B, which on most of these lanes is what it is. If your quotation from anyone implies duty relief and cannot answer the first two questions above, the relief is not in the document. It is in the assumption.

Buyers working through a first consolidated load will find the same ground covered from the buying side on the page for importers, and the trade desk will confirm the origin position for a named destination and SKU list before you commit to anything: contact the trade desk.