VINACHEM

At the seminar held by the Viet Nam's Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises (VAFIE) and the Viet Nam Association for Securities Businesses (VASB) last Saturday, a Eurocham representative said Viet Nam had many advantages, including political stability, a young population, a GDP of US$103 billion in 2009 and a per capital income of $1,200.

The representative said foreign investment was an important capital resource for development and met the demand for economic growth. Foreign investors had partly contributed to developing the legal system and promoting technology transfer.

However, head of the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) Do Nhat Hoang said there were still problems in attracting foreign investment, including different levels of awareness about investment strategies pursued by cities and provinces, a lack of quality investment strategies and weakness in supervising investment activities.

Hoang said to attract more foreign investment in the coming time, Viet Nam would promote disbursement of foreign investment, not give investment licences to technologically backward and environmentally unfriendly projects and only hand over land under certain conditions to projects.

In the first four months of this year, foreign direct investment rose in both newly-registered and disbursed capital, according to the FIA.

Over 260 new projects were licensed during this time, worth a combined $5.6 billion, an increase of 58.5 per cent in capital but a drop of 19.6 per cent in the number of projects over the same period of last year.

FDI disbursement reached $1.1 billion in April, lifting the total disbursement during the first four months of the year to $3.6 billion, an increase of 5.6 per cent over the same period in 2009. — VNS