This has not been released officially to the public and this information comes from visa agents who have contacts inside the government. Therefore, nobody out there should take this information as any sort of official reason to make future plans especially seeing as how no date has been declared as to when it will be put into practice.
The good news is that this is almost certainly true information and I say that because the Vietnam visa agents actually stand to lose business because of this change in policy and therefore stand to gain nothing by lying about it.
I ran into an agent last night who I see on a regular basis because we live in the same neighborhood. Although I do not like this person he is someone that i have to deal with on a professional level on a regular basis. Our conversations are cordial and straight to the point. There are some things I trust him on and others that I do not. One thing I know I can count on him to be truthful about is the upcoming changes to visa rules. He acquires this information faster than the general public does because he is connected with immigration officials and gets insider information. There is probably money changing hands for him to have access to this information and here is what he has told me.
The Vietnamese Parliament meets only a few times a year to discuss changes in policy. One of the things that was discussed in their recent meetings was whether or not to return to the previous policy of issuing 90-day tourist visas for $25. This is they way that the rule was for ages prior to January of 2022. For reasons that I do not know the government changed the policy to 30-days and it has been that way since. However, this has negatively affected the tourism sector and there have been calls from the public to return to the old policy.
According to him, Parliament agreed to and voted almost unanimously to return to the old policy.
This is fantastic news for people like myself and tens of thousands of other people that live here and hundreds of thousands of people that enjoy coming here for longer holidays as well.
However, things do not move quickly in Vietnam and just because the green light was given by the government doesn't mean that it is going to change overnight. It remains to be seen when this policy will go into affect but this is a good sign that it will happen sometime in the next few months and if not, at some point likely before the end of the year.
It could happen by the end of May or it could be October is the word that I am hearing from industry insiders.
So while this is just the word of one person that is in the system, it is good intel because like I said before, he gains nothing by lying about this and therefore I believe him.
Now let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope that it happens sooner rather than later. I know that there will be much jubilance on the day that it is announced because all of us are getting pretty sick of flying in and out of the country every 30 days!