Investment in Vietnam: Singapore, "champion" in the region

Singapore investors are present in almost all economic sectors in Vietnam, from oil and gas exploration, production, processing of agricultural, forestry and fisheries.
Despite the fluctuations of direct investment flows from ASEAN to Vietnam over the years, Singapore maintains top spot leading to a continuous increase in both the number of projects, the number and scale of capital for each project in Vietnam.
Singapore is one of the four ASEAN countries pioneered the exploration of Vietnamese investment market since the 1990s. Even then, the amount of capital from the country in Vietnam has increased rapidly, even at the time of the Asian economic crisis in 1997, when most other countries there is a sharp decline .

Foreign Investment Department (Ministry of Planning and Investment) released the latest figures indicate, the first 7 months of this year, there were 44 projects Singapore is licensed investment in Vietnam, with a total capital over $ 1.3 billion. At the same time there are 8 projects of licensed Singapore investors capital increase for a total of $ 13.3 million. Singapore ranked second out of 39 countries and territories investing in Vietnam.

Thus, since Vietnam promulgated the Law on Foreign Investment, 1988 to the end of July / 2007, Singapore has licensed 503 projects with a total capital of U.S. $ 9.6 billion, continues to lead the ASEAN and ranked 2 in 79 countries and territories have invested in Vietnam.

An average capital project from Singapore totaled $ 18.7 million, higher than the average of the national project, even up to 2-3 times with an average capital of a project some countries and regions, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia.

An expert of the Foreign Investment Agency, said Nguyen Thuy Huong, Singapore investors are present in almost all economic sectors in Vietnam, from exploration and exploitation of oil and gas, industrial production, to processing Agro-forestry-fishery products; but most focus is the service sector with more than $ 5.5 billion.

Recently, the Singapore investors are taking great interest in the field of infrastructure of Vietnam with a large amount of capital into the construction project population housing, offices, and hotels.

In this regard, an official of the Singapore Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City said that, due to limited area, ensuring adequate housing for people is always a matter of attention in Singapore. Therefore, investors will provide Vietnam a lot of experience in the field of infrastructure construction.

According to the Foreign Investment Agency, Joint Venture Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, the company Ltd. Nasteelvina, Limited Corporation Vedan is the first project from the effective deployment of Singapore in English South.

In a document prepared for the visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to the upcoming 6th ASEAN countries, the Foreign Investment Agency made clear, Singapore is always a potential partner in the region that Vietnam should focus on first call from.

However, the general context is the disbursement of FDI in Vietnam over time is quite slow, disbursements of Singapore is just over $ 4 billion.

Therefore, the resolution of these problems in order to speed up disbursement of this project are the Ministry of Planning and Investment as important urgent measures to continue to attract investors from Singapore to Vietnam.

Accordingly, the Vietnamese authorities are implementing the Prime Minister's direction in the review and classification of projects from country to take measures to support, solved the problems of procedures administrative clearance.

In addition, the two sides also begun to adjust "Quick approval mechanism in the investment certificate" between the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Economic Development Authority of Singapore to suit the new conditions.