Foreign investment inflows in M&A plunge in first four months

April 25, 2020 | 13:03

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A plunge in capital going into mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals reduced foreign investment inflows in Vietnam in the first four months of this year.

foreign investment inflows in ma plunge in first four months

Foreign investment inflow in M&A deal plunged in first four months

According to statistics published by the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, in the first four months, Vietnam lured in $12.33 billion from foreign financiers, equalling 84.5 per cent of the figure last year in spite of rising newly-registered and added capital.

Notably, foreign investors poured $6.78 billion into 984 newly-registered projects, down 9.1 per cent in the number of projects but up 26.9 per cent in capital. A large part of this came from the $4 billion Bac Lieu LNG-to-power project which single-handedly raised the average project scale from $4.9 million in 2019 to $6.9 million this year.

In addition, $3.07 billion of capital was added to 335 existing projects, up 45.6 per cent on-year.

Furthermore, there were 3,210 M&A deals with the total capital of $2.48 billion, up 32.9 per cent in number but only 34.7 per cent of last year's capital. The deal scale averaged at $770,000 only. Besides, M&A deals only made up 20.1 per cent of the total capital while it was 48.9 per cent last year.

Almost half (48.4 per cent) of the foreign capital ($6 billion) was poured into the manufacturing and processing sector. The runner up was the power generation and distribution sector with $3.9 billion, making up 31.9 per cent.

Foreign investors poured capital into 57 cities and provinces across the country. Bac Lieu became the locality receiving the largest FDI inflows thanks to the Bac Lieu LNG project.

Among the 93 countries and territories investing in Vietnam, Singapore was the largest with a total of $5.07 billion, making up 41.1 per cent of the total. The runners-up are mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea.

By Kim Oanh

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