Vietnam anticipates new wave of outbound investment

Viettel now has 35 million subscribers in 11 foreign markets

According to Dau Anh Tuan, head of the Legal Department of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, after nearly 30 years since Vietnam’s first outbound investment project was registered, local firms have reached diverse global destinations.

Outbound investment activities have also become increasingly diversified with regards to markets, investment fields, scale, and investment methods, as well as types of businesses.

Nguyen Van Toan, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises, said Vietnamese firms have gone the right way to match the global trend.

Toan cited World Bank figures which reflected that on the global scale outbound investment rose by 10-34 per cent in the past decade. Vietnam was no exception, with the current outbound investment figure being 30 times higher than 10 years ago.

Toan also said that most legal barriers that outbound Vietnamese investment projects faced in the past have been removed.

“Outbound investment policies have come into effect, opening the doors to the high seas for Vietnamese firms. Local firms have been continuously exploring new business fields in foreign markets. Such deals could hardly be imagined in the past,” said Toan.

Buoyant outbound investment was attested by the constant growth of Vietnamese firms in foreign markets.

After 10 years in foreign markets, military telecom giant Viettel now reports having more than 35 million subscribers in 11 foreign markets and has been named among the world’s top 30 telecom firms in subscriber numbers.

State-owned Vietnamese banks venturing into Laos and Cambodia have now opened branches or representative offices in a number of other countries.

Accordingly, Vietcombank has opened offices in Singapore and Hong Kong (China). VietinBank grows its presence in Germany, France, Singapore, and Myanmar.

The $2.7-billion fresh milk production complex of major dairy manufacturer TH Group is Vietnam’s largest outbound investment project in this field in Russia.

In the near future, as the private sector grows stronger, the policy system improves, and Vietnam integrates more deeply and broadly into the world economy, a new wave of outbound investment from Vietnam is just a matter of time.

Tool needed to drive outbound investment A specific management mechanism is urgently needed to ensure efficient outbound investments.