Resolution 21 reaffirms the principles established by Resolution 18, including public ownership of land, the state’s role as the representative owner, the development of a land-use rights market within a socialist-oriented market economy, and the goal of unlocking land resources to support national development.
Resolution 18 focused on making land to function more fully under market mechanisms by abolishing the land price framework, improving auction and bidding mechanisms, and developing the land-use rights market.
Yet, after four years of implementation, reality demonstrated that market mechanisms alone cannot resolve all issues. Planning, land allocation, land recovery, valuation, land financing, as well as losses, wastefulness, corruption, and group interests remain major bottlenecks.
Against this backdrop, Resolution 21 introduces a new layer of thinking: shifting from an administrative management approach to a development governance approach for land.
Perhaps its most significant innovation is treating land as a national competitive advantage that must be governed effectively, rather than merely as a resource to be exploited. As a result, land prices are no longer viewed simply as the value of an asset but as an input cost affecting the entire economy.
Land prices are more than market prices
Resolution 18 affirmed that the state determines land prices and captures the increase in land value that is not created by land users. Its primary focus, however, was on establishing market-based pricing principles, abolishing the land price framework, and strengthening the independence of land valuation.
Resolution 21 does not change those principles but places greater emphasis on the state’s regulatory role.
Land prices must be determined using comprehensive data and scientific methodologies while also serving the country’s development objectives in each period, ensuring reasonable input costs for production and business, strengthening national competitiveness, and preventing multiple pricing systems, artificial price inflation, and market manipulation.
When land prices rise excessively, production costs, infrastructure investment costs, and housing prices all increase. Land prices therefore become not only a real estate issue but also a key variable affecting national competitiveness.
Nevertheless, reducing land costs does not mean the state should impose artificially low prices through administrative orders.
Instead, Resolution 21 presents a far more complex challenge: keeping land access costs at reasonable levels to encourage investment and production while ensuring that the increase in land value generated by planning decisions, infrastructure investment, or changes in land-use purposes is not captured by a small group.
Compensation for site clearance and resettlement
Another significant change under Resolution 21 lies in its approach to land recovery, compensation, and resettlement.
When it was issued, Resolution 18 introduced an important principle: resettlement must be completed before land is taken back, and affected people must receive housing and living conditions equal to or better than those they previously had, together with vocational training, employment support, and livelihood restoration.
Resolution 21 retains those principles but reframes the objective of “rebuilding people’s lives when the state takes back land.”
This reflects a broader understanding of the issue. Losing land is not simply losing an asset that can be compensated with money. People may also lose their livelihoods, established communities, and living environments built over many years.
This broader thinking is also reflected in housing policy.
Resolution 21 calls for creating conditions that enable citizens to secure housing while prioritizing the development of rental housing and apartment buildings in major urban areas.
Another notable change concerns stalled development projects that cannot proceed because agreements cannot be reached with a small number of remaining land users.
Resolution 21 adds the possibility that the State recovers the remaining area when the investor has agreed on most of the area and received the consent of the vast majority of land users.
While land recovery policy reflects an evolving view on citizens’ rights, anti-speculation policy highlights the State’s regulatory role more clearly.
Resolution 18 raised the issue of imposing higher taxes on individuals using large land areas, owning multiple houses, speculating, delaying land use, or leaving land vacant.
Resolution 21 maintains that trajectory with greater determination. Rather than restricting speculation primarily through administrative measures, the resolution directs the combined use of tax and economic tools to make land hoarding costlier than the gains derived from speculation.
Tu Giang