VINACHEM

The Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment has forecasted that 2010 will be a good year for investing overseas.

After penetrating the Thai and Cambodian realty markets, the Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group is implementing joint venture projects to build deluxe apartments and hotels and plant rubber trees in Laos, with a combined capital of 20 million USD.

Another successful business overseas is the military telecoms corporation Viettel. Viettel is negotiating to buy a 60 percent stake in Bangladesh’s mobile phone network Teletalk and a 70 percent stake in Haiti's cell-phone network Teleco. The total investment for the deals is estimated at 359 million USD.

Viettel launched the Metfone mobile service network in Cambodia in February last year and just one month later along with the Laos Asia Telecom Company it also launched the Unitel mobile phone network in Laos. At present, Unitel is the largest telecoms service provider in Laos with more than 900 base transceiver stations, making up 35 percent of all stations in the country.

Overseas investment from Vietnamese businesses reached a record of 7.73 billion USD in 2009, 6 billion of which was poured into Cambodia, which topped the list of 51 countries and territories that have received Vietnamese investment capital.

Vietnamese businesses are expanding their activities in developed markets like Japan, the US, the Republic of Korea and Singapore.

Their projects, which previously focused on mining, afforestation, hydro-electricity, telecoms and infrastructure construction, are now expanding into aviation, banking, insurance and realty.

With the government’s help, Vietnam’s banks have opened branches in countries where Vietnamese businesses have investment projects to help settle capital difficulties and money transfer procedures./.

(Source: vietnamplus)