Access to Policy Resources in Vietnam’s Cultural Industries: From Policy Design to Practical Implementation
The core challenge in developing Vietnam’s cultural industries lies not merely in establishing support policies, but in translating policy directions and mechanisms into resources that creative actors can genuinely access, use, and sustain their economic activities with. For small businesses, household businesses, creative groups, and independent practitioners, policy effectiveness depends significantly on how well policy design aligns with access requirements and the capacity to implement these mechanisms in practice.
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1. An Emerging Cultural Industries Ecosystem
The year 2026 marks a notable shift in how Vietnam recognizes the role of culture in development. Resolution No. 80-NQ/TW, dated January 7, 2026, issued by the Politburo, identifies culture and human development as the foundation, endogenous resource, and important driver of sustainable development. It also sets out the goal of accelerating the development of cultural industries and establishing a startup ecosystem in this field. The Resolution aims for cultural industries to contribute 7% of GDP by 2030.
The significance of this direction extends beyond a numerical target. Alongside the development of cultural markets, recent policy initiatives emphasize the establishment of creative clusters, zones, and complexes; the development of infrastructure for cultural industries; and the application of technology throughout the value chain, from creation and production to distribution, consumption, and rights protection. This signals a shift in approach: culture is increasingly understood not only in terms of preservation, creativity, or public service provision, but also as an ecosystem involving creative actors, businesses, markets, technology, intellectual property, and capital flows. National Assembly Resolution No. 28/2026/QH16, which took effect on July 1, 2026, further specifies several mechanisms for mobilizing resources for cultural development. Under the scope and conditions set out in the Resolution, certain organizations and individuals investing in digital infrastructure, high-tech cultural solutions, and specified cultural industry sectors may benefit from tax incentives.
However, in an industry where creative activities involve numerous small businesses, creative groups, household businesses, and independent practitioners, policy effectiveness depends on whether support mechanisms can be translated into resources that these actors can actually access and use.
2. What Opportunities Does the Draft Law Create for Businesses?
The Draft Law on the Development of Cultural Industries adopts a broader approach than a single incentive policy. Its proposed mechanisms cover creative infrastructure, intellectual property, human resources, spaces for creative activities, financing, taxation, and markets. For smaller-scale actors, these proposals can be examined through four main groups of mechanisms.
2.1. Reducing the Costs of Entry and Experimentation
One notable feature of the Draft Law is its proposal to develop shared tools and infrastructure for creative activities. Under Articles 10 and 11, the State may invest in, commission, assign tasks for, procure, lease services for, or establish public-private partnerships to develop, maintain, and operate creative toolkits that support the creation, design, production, distribution, and exploitation of cultural industry products and services. These tools may be connected to learning resource repositories, shared resource libraries, copyright and related-rights registration systems, and digital platforms. The Draft Law also establishes the principle of providing certain basic support services free of charge while allowing value-added services to be developed through social participation and investment. In addition, Article 12 proposes a controlled sandbox mechanism for new activities and business models to promote innovation, digital transformation, market development, and the refinement of policies and legislation.
For a startup or micro-enterprise, the significance of these mechanisms is relatively concrete: some initial costs associated with tools, data, intellectual property, and business model experimentation could be addressed through shared ecosystem infrastructure rather than being borne entirely by individual businesses. However, their practical effectiveness will depend on how these tools are designed, operated, and made accessible once the policies are implemented.
2.2. Turning Intellectual Property into an Economic Asset
In cultural industries, business value lies not only in tangible assets but also in works, designs, content, brands, and other creative assets. The ability to establish, manage, and exploit intellectual property rights therefore has direct implications for business operations.
The Draft Law proposes tools to support the management of creative processes, rights registration, and the preparation of intellectual property records. It also proposes the development of valuation methodologies, standards, and databases for intellectual property assets. An important shift is the move from protecting creative rights towards creating the conditions for intellectual property to be identified and commercially exploited. However, the establishment or valuation of an asset does not automatically mean that the market or financial institutions will fully recognize its value. This remains a gap that needs to be examined during implementation. For small businesses and independent practitioners, the central question is how creative value can be protected, valued, and converted into tangible resources for business activities.
2.3. Infrastructure, Spaces, and the Conditions for Small Businesses to Survive
Creative businesses need more than capital. They also need spaces in which to work, experiment, exhibit, meet customers, and connect with other actors across the value chain. The Draft Law proposes the development of cultural creative complexes, clusters, and industrial zones, together with support mechanisms for activities conducted within these spaces. Notably, Article 44 provides that small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative startups in the cultural sector would be prioritized for access to credit support programs, credit guarantees, innovative startup support funds, small and medium-sized enterprise development funds, and other lawful sources of financial assistance. Individuals, household businesses, and creative groups would also be eligible for proposed support covering workspace costs during incubation, as well as training, consulting, digital transformation, intellectual property, commercialization, and market-linkage activities.
From another perspective, Article 25 proposes more flexible operating arrangements within creative complexes, clusters, and zones. These include limiting the requirement for separate administrative procedures for individual activities and events in cases that meet the applicable conditions. The Draft Law also proposes reserving a portion of space in State-supported facilities for individual creators, nonprofit organizations, and micro-enterprises at stable, preferential rental rates. If implemented effectively, these mechanisms could extend support beyond the provision of capital to establishing the conditions that smaller-scale actors need to sustain their activities, test ideas, and develop over the long term.
2.4. Financing, Taxation, and Markets
The final issue concerns financial resources. The Draft Law proposes mobilizing multiple sources of funding for cultural industry development, including the state budget, science and technology, innovation, digital transformation, loans, grants, and private investment. Public-private co-investment mechanisms are also proposed, based on the principle of sharing risks and benefits. For businesses, Article 44 proposes prioritizing small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative startups for access to credit, credit guarantees, and support funds. Article 45 also distinguishes between incentive levels for the production of cultural products in general and those for designated priority products and intellectual property assets. The proposed framework therefore extends beyond financing alone. It seeks to create conditions that enable businesses to access resources, develop products, and expand their markets. However, policy effectiveness will depend on whether these resources can be connected and translated into practical business conditions, particularly for small businesses and creative actors with limited financial capacity.
3. Having a Policy Does Not Necessarily Mean Being Able to Access It
This is perhaps the most important issue when examining new policies from the perspective of small businesses. A policy may be clearly defined in a legal document yet still create considerable barriers when applied in everyday business operations.
3.1. Who Meets the Eligibility Requirements?
A single ecosystem may include small and medium-sized enterprises, micro-enterprises, startups, household businesses, creative groups, individual creators, artists, artisans, and independent practitioners. However, these actors differ significantly in their legal, accounting, management, financial, and intellectual property capacities. A business with dedicated legal and accounting staff is in a different position from a studio with only a few people. A household business does not have the same documentation structure or management capacity as a startup company. Meanwhile, an independent practitioner may own a valuable idea or creative work but lack the legal and financial structures needed to demonstrate its value when approaching a financial institution or applying for a support program. The challenge, therefore, lies not only in identifying the appropriate beneficiaries, but also in designing access procedures that reflect the different capacities and scales of these actors.
3.2. What Does It Cost to Access Policy Support?
Being eligible for a support policy does not mean that accessing it is cost-free. To benefit from a support mechanism, businesses need to know that the policy exists, determine whether they qualify, prepare applications, demonstrate their capacity, and meet relevant financial, reporting, and settlement requirements. For larger businesses, these requirements may be handled as part of routine management processes. For micro-enterprises, household businesses, or small creative groups, however, the time, personnel, and specialized expertise required to navigate these procedures can become a significant cost of accessing policy support. Consequently, evaluating a support mechanism requires more than examining the value of the resources provided. It also requires consideration of the administrative costs, time, and capabilities needed to access those resources.
3.3. Asset Valuation Does Not Automatically Translate into Access to Credit
The Draft Law lays the groundwork for documenting, valuing, and developing databases of intellectual property assets. This is a necessary condition for intangible assets to be more clearly recognized in economic transactions. However, a gap remains between determining an asset’s value and being able to use that asset to obtain credit. Whether a financial institution accepts intellectual property as a basis for lending depends on its valuation methods, risk management mechanisms, the asset’s liquidity, and how financial institutions implement the relevant arrangements in practice. The effectiveness of this mechanism therefore depends on whether intellectual property assets are recognized by financial institutions and actually used as a basis for providing financing.
3.4. The Ecosystem Must Accommodate More Than Incorporated Businesses
One notable feature of the Draft Law is that its scope extends beyond legally incorporated businesses. Article 44 sets out specific proposed support mechanisms for individuals, household businesses, and creative groups, including incubation spaces, training, consulting, digital transformation, intellectual property, commercialization, and market linkages. This approach reflects the nature of creative activities, in which a product or idea may originate with an individual, a small group, a studio, a household, or a community of practitioners before developing into a formal business. However, each group has different legal, financial, and management capacities. To genuinely integrate these actors into the ecosystem, support mechanisms must therefore do more than identify the right beneficiaries. They must also be appropriate to each group’s scale, capabilities, and stage of development.
3.5. Policy Effectiveness Depends on Implementation
Mechanisms developed at the central government level must ultimately be translated into specific procedures at the local level and within implementing organizations. These include identifying responsible contact points, establishing eligibility criteria, defining application procedures, allocating financial resources and support spaces, determining how intellectual property is valued, and setting processing timelines. For small businesses, these factors may determine whether a policy becomes genuinely accessible or remains confined to the written document. Policy design must therefore be considered alongside implementation: how policies are communicated and transferred into practice, who is responsible for delivering them, and how many steps businesses must complete to access resources. This is also where significant differences may emerge between policy objectives and beneficiaries’ actual experiences.
4. Where Do Small Businesses, Household Businesses, and Independent Practitioners Fit into This Framework?
From the perspective of participating actors, the proposed ecosystem extends beyond established businesses with relatively substantial capital and well-developed management capacities. The Draft Law also addresses small and medium-sized enterprises, innovative startups, individuals, household businesses, and creative groups. However, being included within the scope of a policy does not mean that all these actors have the same ability to benefit from it.
4.1. Small Businesses
Small businesses must address several challenges simultaneously: product development, intellectual property protection, business model development, fundraising, and market expansion. Mechanisms relating to credit, credit guarantees, support funds, digital transformation, and intellectual property may provide these businesses with additional resources. However, their ability to benefit from such mechanisms will depend significantly on their management capacity, financial records, ability to demonstrate the value of their assets, and the maturity of their business models.
4.2. Household Businesses and Creative Groups
The Draft Law’s explicit inclusion of household businesses and creative groups recognizes that cultural activities are not produced solely by incorporated businesses. A studio, craft workshop, design group, content production team, or household enterprise can all participate in creating and providing cultural products and services. The next step is to establish ways for these actors to participate in the system through procedures proportionate to their scale and capacity, rather than requiring them to comply with operational structures designed for larger businesses.
4.3. Independent Practitioners
Independent practitioners may create valuable works, designs, content, techniques, or knowledge without having a registered business, a legal department, or tangible assets that would enable them to access traditional sources of support. For this group, the tools proposed under Articles 16 and 17 to support the management of creative processes, rights establishment, documentation, and intellectual property valuation could provide an important foundation. However, for creative value to enter the economy, the creator, ownership rights, exploitation model, and market must still be connected. If support remains limited to separate, standalone programs, creators may continue to bear the burden of bridging the gap between creation and commercialization themselves.
5. The Gap Between Policy and Operational Capacity Requires Further Research and Proposals
Developing support policies is only the starting point. For these policies to generate tangible impact, mechanisms are needed to translate them into practical operating conditions for the actors participating in the ecosystem. Businesses need access to resources appropriate to their scale and stage of development. Creators need tools to establish, protect, and exploit the value of their intellectual property. Local authorities need creative-space models capable of sustaining operations over the long term. Financial institutions need a basis for valuing intangible assets and managing risk. Meanwhile, cultural products need a clear pathway from ideation and experimentation to commercialization and market access. These requirements indicate that the gap between policy design and practical implementation cannot be resolved through isolated incentives alone. What is needed is a stronger connection between resources, people, infrastructure, intellectual property, business models, and markets.
A cultural industries ecosystem can develop sustainably only when policies move beyond defining entitlements or allocating resources and genuinely enable creators, small businesses, and communities to participate, collaborate, and develop economic activities. The gap between policy and practice therefore also creates a need to research, test, and design operational models suited to the characteristics of different sectors, localities, and groups of actors. The priority is to determine how individual mechanisms can be connected into a coherent system capable of translating cultural potential into economic and social value.
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