Nearly US$100 bln in FDI disbursed after 25 years

The information was released at the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) conference in Hanoi on March 27, reviewing 25 years of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam.

MPI Deputy Minister Dao Quang Thu said FDI has significantly contributed to year-on-year growth of GDP over the years, which hit 19 percent in 2011.  It has also provided additional capital for the national economy, accounting for 25 percent of total investments, as well as boosting export earnings, constituting 64 percent of 2012’s total export revenue.

FDI has also helped expand international markets for Vietnamese goods and services, and considerably added to State revenue (US$ 14.2 billion in the 2001-2010 period; US$3.7 billion in 2012 alone).

Through foreign-invested projects, modern technology, equipment acquisition, expertise and management experience have been transferred into the country and around 6 million jobs have been generated, either directly or indirectly.

In his speech at the conference, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung praised the achievements that ministries, industry sectors and localities have made in attracting FDI capital over the past 25 years.

Vietnam has been increasingly favoured by foreign investors to run long-term business in the country, Dung noted.

However, Dung pointed out several weaknesses in foreign invested sectors that will need to be addressed, such as the significant imbalance in foreign investment injected in some sectors, slow investment disbursement, and low quantities of content of technology transfer in some projects.

He asked the ministries, sectors and localities to join forces by adopting generous incentives for the kind of large-scale socio-economic infrastructure projects that are able to produce enormous, positive impacts on the country’s socio-economic growth, and also by taking moves to invite foreign investors to Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) projects.

The ministries sectors and localities are instructed to supplement regulations on hi-tech business criterion, mechanisms to develop support industries and capital and financial markets, and environmental protection standards.

At the same time, foreign investors will be encouraged to work with local universities and colleges to train up a high-quality workforce for the nation.

Approved socio-economic infrastructure planning schemes will be made public to enable foreign investors to have wider access to planning information and provide greater certainty for establishing related projects, PM Dung said.

The future promotion of investment activities needs to be coordinated on a national scale to prevent unhealthy competition among localities.

There should also be a closer coordination between the relevant agencies to raise localities’ responsibilities for the attraction and use of FDI capital, Dung noted.