Vietnam remains attractive to foreign investors, according to the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (Eurocham) at a seminar on foreign investment in Vietnam in the post-economic crisis period.

At the seminar held by the Vietnam's Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises (VAFIE) and the Vietnam Association for Securities Businesses (VASB) on May 22, a Eurocham representative said Vietnam had many advantages, including political stability, a young population, a GDP of 103 billion USD in 2009 and a per capital income of 1,200 USD.

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

However, head of the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) Do Nhat Hoang said there are 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, Vietnam will 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 USD, an increase of 58.5 percent in capital but a drop of 19.6 percent in the number of projects over the same period of last year.

FDI disbursement reached 1.1 billion USD in April, lifting the total disbursement during the first four months of the year to 3.6 billion USD, an increase of 5.6 percent over the same period in 2009./.

Source: dailynews