FDI flow shoots up in April
By Quoc Hung - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam has shot up sharply in April to US$3.8 billion, almost doubling the amount in the first quarter and taking the total figure in the year to date to some US$6 billion.
However, the January-April FDI flow is still 25.7% lower the year-earlier period due largely to the stagnant flow in the first three months of the year, said the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency.
As many as 263 foreign-invested projects worth some US$5.6 billion were licensed in the first four months, up 58.5% year-on-year, according to the agency. However, the amount of capital added into 92 existing projects was only US$325 million, down 92.7% from the year-ago period.
In the reviewed period, the northern province of Quang Ninh led the country in attracting FDI, followed by Nghe An, Ba Ria-Vung Tau and HCMC.
This is the first time Quang Ninh Province has led the country in attracting FDI thanks to an investment certificate awarded to the AES Mong Duong Holdings B.V for building a coal-fired power plant worth US$2.15 billion. The Mong Duong 2 coal-fired power plant has a designed generation capacity of 1,200 megawatts under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) form.
The agency reported that the real estate sector has attracted close to US$1.2 billion of registered capital in the first four months of this year.
The disbursement of FDI capital in the year to date also rose a staggering 36% year-on-year to US$3.6 billion. In April alone, foreign investors disbursed US$900 million.
The agency remarks that FDI disbursement had shown an uptrend in 2010. It is predicted that FDI disbursement will reach US$11 billion this year, slightly higher than the amount of US$10 billion in 2009. Experts said this was an encouraging sign in the context of the global economic turbulence.
In 2006-2009, the total amount of registered capital of new FDI projects reached US$119 billion while the disbursement during the period was only US$33.6 billion, or just 28% of the total.