Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his entourage left Switzerland for Hanoi on January 28, successfully ending a trip to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

The WEF is one of world’s most reputable forums, attracting leaders of most nations, international organizations and world leading groups and companies. This year, the forum was held in Davos City under the theme ““Shaping the Global Agenda - the Shifting Power Equation”.

During the forum, there were a wide range of activities of leaders of more than 20 nations and more than 1,000 multinational groups as well as thousands of people from 90 countries. This was the first time the Vietnamese Government leader attended the forum with a working agenda lasting from early morning to late at night.

WEF Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab highlighted the presence of Vietnamese Prime Minister as a positive contribution to the success of this year’s forum. General directors of world leading economic groups paid great attention to Vietnam. The organizing board was surprised to see 50 economic groups engaging in dialogue with the Vietnamese Prime Minister, double the registered number.

During his two days in Davos, PM Dung met with 16 leaders of world economic groups and some meetings even took place during his dinners, demonstrating the great attraction of the country’s investment potential and business opportunity to economic groups.

Alan MacDonald, Citybank Chief Operating Officer, said Vietnam is an attractive destination for world economists and investors. Global investors are keen to more and more into Vietnam which is bustling with trade business and many other activities. This is attributed to the country’s high economic growth rate, stable politics, heavy population, and young labour force and especially the Vietnamese Government’s strong determination to step up administration reform and human training.

During meetings with PM Dung in Davos, foreign investors showed their desire to invest billions of US dollars in Vietnam. Swiss Credit Suisse Bank signed an agreement to provide US$1.7 billion investment capital to the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group and the Vietnam National Shipping Lines Group. The world’s fifth largest insurance group AXA decided to open a representative office and co-operate with Vietnamese insurance companies.

Evaluating the results of the PM trip to attend the WEF, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Cong Phung said the role and position of Vietnam are constantly growing in the international arena. Leaders of many nations and economic groups highly value the achievements recorded by the country in the past 20 years of renovation. There is a big change in their views of Vietnam’s development orientations and plans and, to be sure, they will be more active in doing business with the country in the coming period.