Vietnam pushes ahead in investment stakes

Shin Dong-bin, chairman of Lotte Group, last week came to Vietnam for a groundbreaking ceremony of Lotte E&C’s construction of the Eco Smart City complex in Ho Chi Minh City. Some $900 million has been invested in the construction of the 60-story building on 68 hectares for residential and commercial use.

Manufacturers from major Asian nations have been looking to diversify from China, and Vietnam is a safe bet for many Photo: Le Toan

The chairman met with top Vietnamese officials, revealing that his group expects to invest into developing a number of projects in Hanoi, including a large-scale commercial centre that can attract about 10 million customer arrivals a year. Currently, Lotte has invested nearly $5 billion in Vietnam so far, and has been looking for ways to grow its retail-to-construction business abroad.

In the long term, the South Korean conglomerate aims to make Vietnam its third-largest market behind South Korea and Japan, penetrating deeper into the Southeast Asian market.

Meanwhile, CEO of Samsung Group Roh Tae-Moon revealed the group’s plan to invest an additional $3.3 billion in Vietnam this year for trial production of a ball grid array. The commercial production is slated to begin in July next year at its manufacturing complex in the northern province of Thai Nguyen.

“Samsung Vietnam earned $34.3 billion in export turnover in the first half of 2022, up 18 per cent on-year. The company aims for $69 billion in export turnover this year,” Roh said at the meeting with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in early August.

In another case, Taiwan’s Foxconn signed an MoU with Saigon-Bac Giang Industrial Park Corporation, a subsidiary of Kinh Bac Urban Development Corporation, in mid-August to lease over 50ha of land in Quang Chau Industrial Zone (IZ) in the northern province of Bac Giang to develop a new project with an investment of $300 million.

It is a part of the additional $700 million investment plan to realise the target of $10 billion in annual export revenues that the company released in April last year.

Foxconn is currently the most significant foreign company in Quang Chau IZ with a total leased area of almost 70ha. The group has the total registered investment capital of $773 million and earned a revenue of $3 billion and $6 billion respectively in 2019 and 2020.

Statistics published by the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment showed that, as of August 20, Vietnam attracted $232.9 billion in registered foreign direct investment (FDI) from Northeast Asian markets including Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

This represents an increase of $14.39 billion from the consolidated number of $218.51 billion as of August 20, 2021.

South Korea and Japan still keep the leading positions in luring FDI to Vietnam, at $80.24 billion and $65.69 billion, respectively as of August 20.

As two-way trade between Vietnam and South Korea is forecasted to amount to $100 billion this year, instead of 2023 as previously planned, the goal may lure a series of large-scale projects to Vietnam.

Nguyen Manh Linh, deputy director of Dai Phong JSC – the developer of Dai Phong and My Thuan IZs in the northern province of Nam Dinh, said, “So far this year, the number of delegations of foreign-invested enterprises that has worked with Dai Phong on their potential projects in Vietnam has tripled compared to the figure of last year. The country has the potential for attracting FDI thanks to its successes in controlling the pandemic. However, what is more important is the withdrawal of enterprises from China.”

Many Taiwanese partners highly appreciate the productivity of local workers, which is double compared to the productivity of Taiwanese people, according to Linh. “Thus, they prefer to invest in Vietnam. We are working with a Taiwanese enterprise which is a component supplier of Apple, and it wants to rent 50ha of land to develop a facility. We have set up a meeting in October to continue negotiations,” he said.

Nguyen Hung Son Business and planning director Kansai Vina Production and Construction JSC As a partner of multinational corporations from Japan, South Korea, and China, which provides a comprehensive implementation of civil and industrial construction projects, Kansaivina sees that investors from Asia highly appreciate the environment in Vietnam thanks to its political stability, competitive labour cost, and attractive policies. The groups from countries and territories in Asia prefer to invest in warehouses and facilities for rent. This demand increases year by year. For example, BW Industrial has a demand to rent an additional millions of square metres each year. In 2021, we were busier than in 2020, and the revenue also increased compared to 2020. These results came from the government’s effort in controlling the pandemic. The company’s construction projects were completed on time according to the initial commitment with the investors, with high quality and safety ensured. In the first eight months of this year, the company still reports an increase in revenue and the number of bidding construction. Kansaivina became the contractor of Core5 Haiphong – which is the group’s first factory and warehouse, and will be available to clients by the early second quarter of 2023. Besides this, Vietlog Industrial, an affiliate of Hong Kong-based investment management company Skymont Capital selected Kansaivina to become the contractor of the newest project in the northern province of Hung Yen.

Dao The Anh Chairman of Board of Directors Redsunland Investment JSC Recently, we took investors to visit industrial zones and clusters to implement field surveys, many of which were investors from mainland China and Taiwan. In the first eight months of this year, South Korea was second among the 94 countries and territories investing in Vietnam with a total investment capital sum of around $3.5 billion, followed by Japan ($1.49 billion), showing the key contribution of investors from the East Asia region into Vietnam. According to our observation, many Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese investors want to expand their operations, but have yet to mobilise enough capital to build large warehouses and factories. Thus, their short-term solution is to rent warehouses and facilities to explore the market and have more time to arrange capital for renting land to develop their facilities. These investors prefer to select warehouses near their main factories, as these are convenient for production and logistics. This is the reason for the increase in merger and acquisition deals in the warehouse and facility segment.

Bac Ninh IPs lure nearly 60 million USD in investment in July The total newly registered and adjusted investment capital that poured into the northern province of Bac Ninh’s industrial parks (IPs) in July hit 59.96 million USD. Of the sum, 36.41 million USD was foreign direct investment (FDI).

HCM City tops nation in FDI attraction in first eight months Southern HCM City topped the country in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first eight months of 2022, accounting for 16.1 per cent of the national figure, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency (FIA).