FDI flows into supporting industries
By Quoc Hung - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – The foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow into Dong Nai in the year to date has exceeded the province’s target for the year, with a considerable amount of it poured into supporting industries.
Bo Ngoc Thu, director of the Dong Nai Planning and Investment Department, said the province so far has attracted US$986 million in both fresh and additional FDI, rising 113% year-on-year and exceeding the province’s forecast for the year by 9.5%.
In particular, 30 projects were granted new investment certificates with total registered capital of US$588 million while 42 operational projects raised their capital by US$398 million, Thu told a press conference last Friday on the January-June FDI situation of Dong Nai.
Thu said the new projects were committed mainly to the industrial sector, with about 50% of them active in supporting industries, which account for 85% of the total registered capital.
For the first time the province has lured more FDI in supporting industries than other areas. Most of these projects involve Japanese firms.
Other sectors with FDI projects are mechanical manufacturing, food processing and cosmetics. In particular, there are two projects producing hi-tech equipment for healthcare, cable television, security and telecommunications.
Thu said this is consistent with the province’s FDI attraction policy, with a focus on hi-tech industries that generate high added value in production and supporting industries.
Dong Nai, she added, prioritizes FDI projects committed to supporting industries so as to develop manufacturing, with investors from Japan on the radar.
After the investment promotion trip to Japan in April, Dong Nai has welcomed hundreds of Japanese investors to the province to sound out investment opportunities. This, in the long run, will attract more Japanese investors into supporting industries in the province, said Thu.
She remarked despite the economic woes, FDI enterprises still carry out their projects, with a total amount of disbursed capital reaching US$370 million, up 8.8% over the same period last year. The accumulated realized capital of FDI firms active in the province so far has amounted to US$9.71 billion, or 47.8% of total pledged capital.
Many projects are disbursing capital on schedule, Thu noted.
In the rest of the year and in the coming years, Dong Nai will not focus on the number of projects but the quality of projects, said Thu.
In the first five months, the province saw 38 local companies applying for dissolution, 23 branches and representative offices asking for termination and 31 businesses requesting suspension. Most of them were small and medium enterprises. The major causes were inefficient business, poor consumption and financial distress.