{"id":1592,"date":"2026-09-28T16:24:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T07:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/industry_news\/aeon-vietnam-ent\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T16:24:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T07:24:04","slug":"aeon-vietnam-ent","status":"publish","type":"industry_news","link":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/industry_news\/aeon-vietnam-ent\/","title":{"rendered":"The ENT That Had Held Back 300 Aeon Stores Is Lifted in October; How Will Shelf Space Grow?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under a decree Vietnam promulgated in September, the Economic Needs Test (ENT)<\/strong> that has been imposed on foreign retailers when opening a second or subsequent store is removed for companies from CPTPP member states. It takes effect on October 18. In Nikkei Asia's reporting, Aeon Vietnam president Daisuke Tezuka said it is \"extremely important for advancing a medium-term plan to triple the scale of the business in five years,\" and FamilyMart has set a goal of 300 stores in Hanoi alone by FY2031. Seen from the side that makes food in Japan, this does not end as a story about opening stores. The move to increase the shelves where Japanese food is placed in Vietnam and the move to increase the channels drawing Vietnamese raw materials toward Japan are advancing simultaneously within the same expansion plan of the same company.<\/p>\n

What was decided is an \"exemption from review from the second store onward,\" effective October 18<\/h2>\n

The basis is Decree 342\/2026\/ND-CP<\/strong> which replaces Decree 09\/2018\/ND-CP that had been in place since 2018. The commentaries from Baker McKenzie, Indochine Counsel, and LNT & Partners all give the effective date as October 18, 2026. The ENT system itself is not disappearing; rather, for investors from the partner countries and regions with which Vietnam promised to abolish the ENT, the exemption is now affirmed head-on in the text. Besides the CPTPP, the EVFTA toward the EU and the UKVFTA toward the UK are cited.<\/p>\n

Upon joining the CPTPP, Vietnam had promised to abolish the ENT by January 2024, but its transposition into domestic law was delayed (Nikkei Asia). This is the background to the repeated requests Japanese retailers have made. Reading it as having become text about two years and eight months behind schedule is closer to the actual situation.<\/p>\n

The exemption is determined by the investor's nationality. Japanese companies meet the conditions as companies from a CPTPP member state, but Baker McKenzie points out that how the licensing authorities view the capital structure and the beneficial owner of the entity operating the store is a matter of operation. Where a company has entered through a joint venture or the acquisition of a local firm, the exemption may not go through as is.<\/p>\n

What was the ENT looking at, and what stopped from the second store onward<\/h2>\n

The ENT is a procedure in which the administration assesses in advance how a new store will affect its surroundings, and it has worked as a mechanism to protect domestic retail. Cross-referencing the commentaries from the various law firms, what was examined under Decree 09 was five points: the size of the trading area the store affects, the number of retail stores already operating in the same area, market stability and the impact on the business of existing stores and traditional markets, the impact on traffic volume and environmental sanitation and fire prevention, and the contribution to the local socioeconomy.<\/p>\n

Many items had no numerical criteria written into the text, leaving room for judgment on the ground. President Tezuka has said that procedures would stall without the reasons being clear, and that it could take several months for a review to finish (Nikkei Asia).<\/p>\n

There were loopholes. According to LNT & Partners, Decree 09 had a provision exempting from the ENT stores of under 500 square meters located inside a shopping center that did not fall under convenience stores or mini-supermarkets. So foreign retailers chose to go inside malls rather than onto the street and to keep the floor area small. The same circumstance made it hard for specialty stores like Uniqlo to open standalone street-front stores.<\/p>\n

According to the firms' commentaries, under Decree 342 the vague requirement of a location's \"consistency with planning\" is replaced by compliance with legislation across seven fields: land, urban planning, investment, construction, fire prevention, traffic safety, and environmental sanitation. A line of 5,000 square meters is drawn for judging the trading area, with anything below it reviewed at the commune or ward level and anything above at the provincial level. The licensing window has also moved from the provincial Department of Industry and Trade to the Provincial People's Committee. Meanwhile, large-scale retail networks and e-commerce platform operators face new review by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defense. LNT & Partners writes that because Decree 342 does not clearly state how \"full compliance\" is to be judged and the application forms are not yet in place, the authorities' discretion and processing delays will remain. The exemption is a starting point, not a move to zero review.<\/p>\n

For 300 supermarkets versus 300 convenience stores, the exemption bites differently<\/h2>\n

The single line \"exempt from the second store onward\" bites hardest for formats that line up small stores across an area. The smaller the investment per store and the larger the number of openings, the more the cost of a review that takes several months per store piles up. For a business that spends several years building a single large mall, a review of a few months fits within the process.<\/p>\n

The breakdown Aeon Vietnam gave at an online briefing on July 8, 2026 was: 8 shopping centers, 15 general merchandise stores (GMS), 36 small supermarkets (SM, the \"My Basket\" type in Japan), 182 convenience stores, 74 specialty stores and services, and 1 drugstore (Shokuhin Shimbun). The 300-store goal rests on this small-supermarket format. Shokuhin Shimbun describes the current 36 stores as \"My Basket\"-type SMs, and explains the 300-store structure as an expansion of \"MaxValu\" openings. Reaching 300 stores by FY2030 works out to sustaining a pace of more than one store a week for over four years. Stacking up this many without an exemption was unworkable on the review queue alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Format \/ chain<\/th>\nNumber of stores<\/th>\nPublicly stated target<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Aeon shopping centers<\/td>\n8 (July 2026)<\/td>\n\u2014<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aeon general merchandise stores (GMS)<\/td>\n15 (July 2026)<\/td>\n\u2014<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aeon small supermarkets (SM)<\/td>\n36 (July 2026)<\/td>\n300 stores by FY2030 as MaxValu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aeon convenience stores<\/td>\n182 (July 2026)<\/td>\n\u2014<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fuji Mart (BRG \/ Sumitomo Corporation)<\/td>\n23 (Hanoi, July 2026)<\/td>\n50 stores nationwide<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
FamilyMart<\/td>\n172 (2026 estimate, nationwide)<\/td>\n300 stores in Hanoi alone by FY2031<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Store counts are Shokuhin Shimbun for Aeon, JETRO's country report (July 2026) for Fuji Mart, and the Q&Me tally reported by The Investor for FamilyMart; the targets are from Nikkei Asia and JETRO.<\/p>\n

FamilyMart's 300 stores are described with differing scopes depending on the report. The reporting this time gives 300 stores limited to Hanoi, but a September 11 article in the same Nikkei Asia was written in a way that could be read as 300 stores nationwide. This article follows the newer one that makes the scope explicit, and the table is built on that premise.<\/p>\n

FamilyMart's \"300 stores in Hanoi\" has the same structure. In the Q&Me tally, Vietnam had 9,671 convenience stores and mini-supermarkets nationwide in 2026, of which 1,676 were in Hanoi. 300 stores in Hanoi alone would mean one company holding just under 20% of Hanoi's current total. The company's nationwide estimate for 2026 is 172 stores, and it opened its first Hanoi store in August 2026. 300 stores in five years would again be more than one a week.<\/p>\n

The numbers on the demand side are rising. According to the National Statistics Office (NSO) release as compiled by VIETJO, retail and services revenue in August 2026 was 679.814 trillion dong, up 14.9% year on year. The cumulative total for January\u2013August was 5,235.533 trillion dong, up 13.3%, of which goods sales were 3,947.612 trillion dong, up 12.8%. This article converts at 10,000 dong \u2248 about 61 yen (the prevailing rate in late September 2026), which puts January\u2013August goods sales at about 24 trillion yen.<\/p>\n

Still, the makeup of the sales floor still leans toward traditional retail. In InfoBank's synthesis of several surveys, the channel mix by sales is a \"6:3:1\" lineup of about 60% traditional retail, about 30% modern retail, and about 10% e-commerce. By the General Statistics Office of Vietnam's figures, there are about 1.4 million mom-and-pop shops and 8,000 to 8,500 traditional markets. The government has set a target in Prime Minister's Decision 1163\/QD-TTg to raise the modern-retail ratio to 38\u201340% by 2030. The ENT exemption raises the opening speed of modern retail, but the distance until the lead role of the sales floor changes hands remains. There is also local reporting that traditional markets' foot traffic is falling, but because the figure for the rate of decline could not be confirmed in a primary source, this article does not address it.<\/p>\n

The local reception is split between \"welcome\" and \"wait and see how it operates\"<\/h2>\n

The strongest welcome comes from Aeon. President Tezuka's comment is to the effect that the preconditions for the medium-term plan are now in place, and he himself puts forward the figure of tripling in five years.<\/p>\n

The president of FamilyMart Vietnam said he hopes the authorities will quickly review the other current regulations that are hampering the expansion of the store network (Nikkei Asia). Even with one ENT removed, there is a reading that other requirements stopping store openings remain.<\/p>\n

A person connected to Sumitomo Corporation, which invests in Fuji Mart, told Nikkei Asia that how much effect the deregulation actually produces needs to be judged carefully. The view that a gap will emerge between the text and its operation overlaps with LNT & Partners' point.<\/p>\n

The head of JETRO's Hanoi office told Nikkei Asia that most consultations on entering the Vietnamese market aim to capture domestic consumer demand, and that M&A of local companies is also active in order to secure distribution channels and shorten the time to obtain licenses. It is also a story that the choice to buy a company rather than wait for an exemption was actually being taken.<\/p>\n

What Japanese food manufacturers decide first is under whose name to place it on the shelf<\/h2>\n

Even if the shelves increase, Japanese manufacturers are not automatically lined up on them. The distribution routes laid out in JETRO's country report (July 2026) split into three. A route in which a major local wholesaler imports directly from a Japanese manufacturer or trading company; a route in which a small or mid-sized wholesaler uses an import agent; and a route in which a retailer, such as a Japanese-product specialty store, imports on its own. Vietnamese restaurants typically buy from wholesalers or secondary wholesalers, and direct import remains a minority. Because high-priced imported goods are sold not through traditional channels but through modern ones, more stores in the Japanese-affiliated retail network means directly more places to put imported goods.<\/p>\n

There are also measured figures for where people are buying. In a consumer survey B&Company conducted of 400 people aged 15 to 55 in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (carried out in October 2024, published by JETRO), the most common place where Japanese food and foodstuffs were bought was an Aeon Mall at 29%, followed by Shopee at 18% and Japanese-product specialty stores at 14%. The most-bought Japanese food and foodstuffs were seafood at 37%, prepared foods at 20%, and confectionery at 12%. The reasons for buying were taste at 49%, health, nutritional value, and safety at 23%, and convenience at 22%. It is a picture in which a single Japanese-affiliated retailer holds nearly 30% of purchase touchpoints, and if that one company increases its small-format stores to 300, the number of touchpoints themselves will change.<\/p>\n

The procedures for getting onto those shelves run on a system separate from Decree 342. Packaged processed foods are product self-declaration<\/strong> subject to it: they are declared via mass media or the company's own website and are also posted in the food-safety information system. The documents are prepared in Vietnamese and state the product name, ingredients, use-by date, packaging specifications and packaging materials, the manufacturer's name and address, and a product specification sheet. However, the product specification sheet is also accepted in an English version, provided it contains the required items such as detailed product information, nutritional composition, information on heavy metals and microorganisms, and packaging and storage conditions. The attached food-safety data sheet (test report) must have been issued within the past 12 months by an authority-designated laboratory or an ISO 17025-compliant laboratory. Health-use foods, medical nutritional foods, foods for special dietary regimes, and nutritional products for children aged 36 months or under do not pass through self-declaration and require, with the Ministry of Health or the provincial\/municipal Department of Health, a product declaration registration<\/strong> that is mandatory.<\/p>\n

There is a caveat specific to 2026 here. According to the same JETRO report, Decree 46\/2026\/ND-CP, which replaces Decree 15\/2018\/ND-CP, was promulgated on January 26, 2026, and new provisions on self-declaration and registration were also issued as Resolution 66.13\/2026\/NQ-CP on January 27, 2026. However, under Resolution 15\/2026\/NQ-CP of April 2026, both were temporarily suspended until the amended Food Safety Law and the amended decree setting out its implementing details take effect. In other words, what applies in practice is still Decree 15\/2018\/ND-CP. Designing procedures by looking only at the new decree numbers will trip you up.<\/p>\n

Labeling runs on yet another decree. Labels must be in Vietnamese, and the practice of applying a supplementary label after import is permitted. However, Decree 37\/2026\/ND-CP requires that the original label at the time of customs clearance state the product name, the origin, and the name and address of the organization or individual on the export side responsible for the product. If these are missing, an additional document must accompany the shipping papers. Because the mandatory label items include the manufacturing date, use-by date, and best-before date, labeling intended for the Japanese domestic market will not pass as is.<\/p>\n

The side adding shelf space and the side drawing in raw materials become the same company<\/h2>\n

Reading the expansion of Japanese-affiliated retailers merely as \"more shelves where Japanese foods line up\" misses half the picture. At the same briefing, Aeon Vietnam laid out a plan to raise its private-brand share from about 6% now to 20% by 2030. The target content is \"Made in Vietnam\" and \"Made in ASEAN,\" with the explanation that it will balance quality and affordability to reduce import dependence (Shokuhin Shimbun). A network of 300 stores is a vessel for carrying Japanese finished products and, at the same time, a vessel for soaking up Vietnamese raw materials and processed goods.<\/p>\n

This duality offers real benefits to procurement staff on the Japanese side. A retailer raising its PB share more than threefold decides specifications and volumes itself and brings them to growing regions. More sites will have the selection of growing regions, the arrangement of planting, and audits of processing contractors run on Japanese-affiliated standards. There will be situations where it is faster for a Japanese buyer to go through a partner where audits and ledgers are already running than to search for a growing region alone. As an actual example of a Japanese company opening a window for raw materials through a local joint venture, the move by Jantop, a Japan-Korea joint venture that made its first shipment of 20 tonnes of chili powder to Japan<\/a> is one such case.<\/p>\n

The numbers in the opposite direction show that exports to Japan are stalling. According to VASEP, Vietnam's seafood exports in the first half of 2026 were US$5.8 billion, up 12.8% year on year, but exports to Japan came to US$787.5 million, up only 0.7%. Its share was 13.6%. Over the same period, exports to China and Hong Kong were US$1.5 billion, up 37.9%, while exports to the United States were US$897.9 million, roughly flat. VASEP cites weak demand, the weak yen, the EU's IUU yellow card, and stricter certification requirements as constraints. If a pattern continues in which exports to Japan stay flat while only those to China grow, growing regions' attention will drift away from Japan. More retail floor space inside Vietnam that buys to Japanese standards does not show up directly in the export-to-Japan figures, but it gives the growing-region side a reason to maintain production to Japanese standards.<\/p>\n

There are also moves to widen the receiving capacity on the Japanese side. the example of Kyokuyo expanding sales of Vietnamese pangasius within Japan<\/a> As this shows, a year is coming when the side anchoring Vietnamese products on Japanese shelves and the side increasing retail space in Vietnam will compete for the same growing regions. What procurement staff should secure first is not the growing region itself but that region's processing-contract capacity.<\/p>\n

Procedures to clear before export, and the wall that cannot be crossed<\/h2>\n

Almost all foods intended for sale are subject to specialized inspection. According to the JETRO report, jurisdiction over food hygiene and safety inspection is divided by product category: dietary supplements fall under the Ministry of Health; beverages, processed milk, vegetable oils, flour, bakery and confectionery, and jam under the Ministry of Industry and Trade; and grains, meat, seafood, vegetables and fruits, eggs, raw milk, salt, seasonings, sugar, tea and coffee, and the like under the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. Inspection comes in three types\u2014simplified, normal, and strict\u2014with normal inspection as the rule; normal and simplified take within three business days, and strict within seven. Plant quarantine is within 24 hours, while animal quarantine takes 3 to 5 days for aquatic animals and derived products and within 45 days for terrestrial animals and derived products. Customs clearance is filed electronically via VNACCS, with document inspection within two business hours of receiving the full set and physical inspection within eight business hours of completing document submission as a guideline.<\/p>\n

There are also registrations to complete in advance on the Japanese side. For fruit, the production orchards, grading and packing facilities, and storage facilities must be registered in advance; for seafood, the final processing facility is registered; and for meat, prior accreditation as a \"meat-handling facility for export to Vietnam\" is required. Seafood is registered with the competent bureau of the prefecture where the facility is located, and fruit with the Plant Protection Station.<\/p>\n

And there is a wall that has not been crossed. JETRO notes that because quarantine conditions concerning pest risk analysis for goods from Japan have not been stipulated on the Vietnamese side, the vast majority of fruits and vegetables cannot be exported from Japan. Even if the number of stores grows to 300, the path for fresh Japanese produce to line those shelves is not open at present. What is open is the processed-goods and seafood side. Of the 87.8 billion yen in food and foodstuff exports from Japan to Vietnam in 2025, the only single item exceeding 10 billion yen was mollusks and smoked mollusks (HS030722) at 19.8 billion yen, up 87% year on year (Ministry of Finance trade statistics, as cited by JETRO). The top 10 items accounted for about 64.6% of the total, and five of them were frozen fish. The fact has not changed that the main characters among foods flowing from Japan to Vietnam are not finished products consumers take off the shelf but raw materials processed locally. The way squid and octopus supply and demand move together in the two countries was covered in the installment laying out the relationship between squid migration volume in the Sea of Japan and Vietnamese squid and octopus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On tariffs, there are items eligible for preferential rates under AJCEP, the Japan-Vietnam EPA (JVEPA), the CPTPP, and RCEP. The conditions are to meet the rules of origin and to prepare the certificate of origin for each agreement (Form AJ, Form JV, and so on), and for items with a phased tariff transition, the schedule must also be checked.<\/p>\n

Summary: if you act by October 18, where to start<\/h2>\n

The ENT exemption takes effect on October 18, but there is nothing in particular that Japanese food manufacturers need to have ready by that date. It will start to bite from 2027 onward, once Japanese-affiliated retailers' small-format stores actually begin to multiply. The order of things to finish by then can be narrowed to three.<\/p>\n

The first is to sort out whether your flagship items pass via product self-declaration or require product declaration registration. Products carrying health-oriented claims can fall on the registration side, where the required documents and the timeline both change. Design on the premise that Decree 46\/2026\/ND-CP is suspended and Decree 15\/2018\/ND-CP is in force.<\/p>\n

The second is arranging laboratories. Because the food-safety data sheet must be issued within 12 months, taking it too early and letting it sit means redoing it. Secure an authority-designated or ISO 17025-compliant laboratory for each item.<\/p>\n

The third is to decide the trading partner in the distribution chain. If you aim for the shelves of Aeon or Fuji Mart, the realistic route is through a local wholesaler with an existing delivery track record rather than direct dealing. JETRO's country report carries a list of importers, wholesalers, and retailers that handle Japanese food, organized down to the items handled and the main sales destinations. Approaching a partner that already handles your items is the shortest path.<\/p>\n

If you are on the side drawing in raw materials, what to check first is not the growing region but the processing-contract capacity. Before retailers raising their PB share move to lock up the same processing plants, get the conversation about volume and specifications in. The idea of putting fresh Japanese produce on Vietnamese shelves is best shelved until quarantine conditions are in place\u2014there is no waste that way.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h2>\n