The amount of disbursed capital of Foreign Direct Investment has recovered in the past two months to an average of US$1 billion monthly after falling for several consecutive months, the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) reported.
A report of the FIA under the Ministry of Planning and Investment shows the disbursed capital of enterprises using FDI in August is estimated to be $1 billion, equal to the figure in July.
This uptrend is particularly encouraging as the figures slumped to $900 million in May and $780 million in June.
However, the disbursed amount is still low compared to the record $1.4 billion in March, the agency said.
The high disbursement figure in August raises the total disbursed capital in 2011 to date to $7.3 billion, a 1 percent increase year-on-year.
Experts said the increase was slight but encouraging in the context of global uncertainties, as foreign investors continued to maintain their confidence in Vietnam’s investment environment.
However, new FDI commitment was not as heartening in the January-August period.
According to FIA, 582 FDI projects have been licensed to date with a total registered capital of over $7.9 billion, down by 34 percent in the number of projects and 30 percent in the registered capital compared to last year.
Also in this period, 168 projects registered for a total additional capital of over $1.6 billion, an increase of 1 percent in injected funds compared to last year.
With these figures, the total new FDI commitments in the first eight months reached $9.5 billion.
Of the sectors attracting FDI, manufacturing attracted $4.6 billion of newly pledged funds, while power, gas, and water distribution, and construction came next with the registered capital of over $2.5 billion and $671 million respectively.
Hong Kong topped the list of the biggest investors in 2011 with the total newly-registered investment capital of $2.9 billion, followed by Singapore with $1.45 billion, and South Korea with $851 million.
The northern province of Hai Duong emerged as the top locality in attracting FDI with $2.5 billion of newly-registered investment capital, while HCMC came second and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province was third with new investment pledges of $1.65 billion and $580 million respectively.
In its report, the FIA also noted the strong performance of the foreign investment sector, especially import-export.
From January through August, foreign-invested enterprises obtained an estimated $32.64 billion in export revenues including crude oil export, a year-on-year increase of 34 percent.
Excluding crude oil, this sector still posted a revenue increase of 32 percent to $27.73 billion.
Foreign-invested enterprises spent $30.1 billion on imports, a rise of 31 percent, which means they enjoyed a trade surplus of $2.54 billion within the past eight months, according to the report.
Vietnam early this year set targets to attract $20 billion of new FDI capital and $11-12.5 billion of FDI disbursements.