Foreign investors still feel upbeat about doing business in Vietnam

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Tibor Novákm, country manager and chief representative of Hungarian-backed pharmaceutical firm Gedeon Richter’s representative office in Vietnam, told VIR the firm was seeking possibilities for making pharmaceuticals in Vietnam.

“We are collecting information and carefully studying the market, which is full of potential. If the market can meet our conditions, we might consider construction of a factory here,” he said, but added that it might take 5-10 years to build such a factory.

András Somos, chief executive officer (CEO) of Hungary’s consulting firm SKC-Consulting also told VIR he was quite upbeat about business opportunities for SKC in Vietnam. “We’re providing consultancy for many Hungarian firms wishing to do business in Vietnam, like Prigram operating in automatisation, General Com operating in water treatment and medical equipment maker Meditech.”

SKC also plans to recruit more employees in Vietnam until 2015.

Last week saw EuroCham in Vietnam announced its 15th quarterly Business Climate Index (BCI) survey conducted in May and released last week. Results showed that European business confidence and outlook in Vietnam increased to 66 points this quarter, up from last quarter’s 59 points.

The rate of respondents with positive assessment about the business outlook rose to an impressive 57 per cent against last quarter’s 49 per cent and 44 per cent in last year’s corresponding period.

Additionally, the number of respondents retaining negative perceptions about the economy declined from 29 last quarter to 21 per cent this quarter.

“This quarter has shown positive expectations from the European business community in terms of the resource of strong implementation of FTA. According to the findings, competitive labour costs were perceived as one of the main reasons for EuroCham members to settle their businesses in Vietnam,” said the survey (See table 1).

Source: Philippines Department of Labour and Employment

Last week also saw the Hungarian National Trading House launched in Hanoi to promote trade activities between Hungarian and Vietnamese enterprises, especially in agriculture, food, medical devices, IT, environment, healthcare, infrastructure and construction.

“Vietnam’s market size has been growing strongly and now is very good time to open this house and more Hungarian technology will be transferred to Vietnamese partners,” the house’s CEO Gyorgy Kerekes told VIR.

Hungarian Ambassador to Vietnam Eszter Torda said more Hungarian investors would come to Vietnam to seek business opportunities soon. About 12 Hungarian enterprises had cultivated their projects in Vietnam over the past two years.

“Vietnam’s economic development is prompting many Hungarian firms to export poultry meat to Vietnam,” she said.

Overseas Vietnamese Tina Thien-Nga Nguyen, CEO of enterprise resource planning (ERP) consulting firm Etigo Vietnam-Tin A, said Etigo had been developing well in Vietnam for several years and would strengthen its operations here to compete with many other  foreign ERP firms.

“Vietnam’s economy is rebound and there’s big potential. We understand Vietnamese enterprises better than foreign firms here. Besides, Vietnam has a great number of small and medium-sized enterprises needing ERP services,” she said.

Early this month, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told the international business community at the 2014 Mid-term Vietnam Business Forum that “Based on the realities and the future policies and solutions, please maintain your belief in Vietnam, a country of 100 million people in the near future; a country with socio-political stability, a fast-growing and sustainable economy, a fair, transparent and friendly investment environment, an improving market economy increasingly integrating into the world economy.”

He said more favourable conditions would be created to further attract foreign investors to do business successfully in the country’s competitive environment.