Japan keen to increase investment in Vietnam

The 100-member delegation led by JCCI Chairman Tadashi Okamura includes representatives and leaders from major Japanese groups such as All Nippon Airways, Atena, Honda Motor, Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsui, Sumitomo and Taiheiyo Cement.

Apart from promoting cooperation with Vietnam in traditional areas such as infrastructure development and energy, small and medium-sized Japanese businesses are particularly eager to invest in support industries.

According to the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), Japan remained the biggest investor among the 29 nations and territories having newly licenced investment projects in Vietnam during the past eight months with $4.33 billion in registered capital.

This accounted for more than half of the total newly registered and increased capital in the country.

Over the years, Vietnam has always been regarded as an attractive destination for Japanese investors because of its political stability, open investment environment and abundant labour force.

However, Co-chairman of the Vietnam-Japan Economic Committee, Kyohei Takahashi, said Vietnam needed to improve its business environment and the competitiveness of the national economy in order to attract new inflows of foreign investment, including that from Japan.

Japanese investors need legal assistance for their business operations and they are also concerned with living conditions when they decide to invest in new land, he noted.

The MPI and the Japanese Ministry of Economics, Commerce and Industry have selected five areas for cooperation in implementing Vietnam’s industrialisation strategy within the Vietnam-Japan cooperation framework through 2020.

According to the strategy, Vietnam will create specific policies to call for investment from Japanese businesses to help develop support industries in Vietnam.

MPI Minister Bui Quang Vinh said: “In addition to industrial parks exclusively for Japanese businesses, we want to build special villages for Japanese residents in Vietnam. Our aim is to create favourable business and good working environments for Japanese investors to promote further Vietnam-Japan cooperation.”

Japanese investors are also keen to invest in Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects for developing infrastructure and energy in Vietnam, which is one of the important contents of the Vietnam-Japan joint initiative.

Japan is a major investor in Vietnam and its ODA funding is mainly allocated to infrastructure development projects.

The MPI said if Japan combined private capital sources with its government ODA investment in Vietnamese infrastructure, Japanese funded projects would be more efficient, particularly as Vietnam was beginning to implement some trial projects following the PPP model.