Russia ups its stake in Vietnam

Russian firms are investing in petroleum and also a bus factory in VietnamPhoto: Le Toan

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Those investments moved Russian direct investment capital  to Vietnam to more than $2 billion, covering 93 separate projects by the end of April this year.

In the first four months of 2013, Russia ranked the third position among countries and territories investing in Vietnam.  Meanwhile, it ranked 18th among foreign investors in Vietnam based on accumulated registered investment capital.

Meanwhile, the total accumulated investment capital of Vietnamese businesses in Russia came to $4.6 billion committed into 17 projects of which more than $2.36 billion was from the Vietnamese side. The recent Russian surge includes the ramped-up joint venture Rusvietpetro, a  partnership involving state-run PetroVietnam. Rusvietpetro scaled up its investment to $1.4 billion, turning Russia into the leading outbound investment market by Vietnamese investors thus far.

Those investment figures are expected to go up further since it was reported that during the four-day visit to Russia from May 12-15, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung will witness the signing of an investment cooperative agreement between PetroVietnam and Russian counterpart Zarubezhneft. Accordingly, the two parties envisage a new joint venture setup in Russia to spur offshore oil and gas extraction.

In parallel to the deal with Zarubezhneft, PetroVietnam has also reached cooperative agreements with Russian partners Gazprom and Rosneft for tapping oil and gas potential both in Russia and Vietnam, as well as building petro-chemical refinery plants and promoting product distribution in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the Vietsovpetro joint venture, after setting the record of extracting the 200 millionth tonne of oil last August, plans to build a modern drilling platform at Gau Trang (White Bear) field and two other facilities BK16 and BK27, striving to offset for output shortfall at Bach Ho (White Tiger) field.

In mid-April this year, the Binh Dinh Provincial Economic Zone Management Authority gave the nod for Russia’s Bus Centre Met Company Limited to develop a $1 billion facility to manufacture and assemble buses, auto parts and agricultural machineries in the central Binh Dinh province.  Construction is slated to start by the end of  2013.

Also in April, Micran, a Russian leading group on research and manufacture of liaison and communication, microwave, information privacy, measuring, positioning and control equipment had made a foray to Vietnam hunting for investment opportunities. 

Another Russian business mission consisted of seven companies like Sermesstroy, Oliva and Faradey also came to Vietnam last month, seeking cooperative opportunities.

“Besides cooperative deals on technology transfer and training, Russian companies want to tie out with Vietnamese counterparts in forming business joint-ventures,” said Strozaeva Lubov Viktorovna, the head of the Russian business group to Vietnam.