Vinh Long opens itself up to new foreign investors

What advantages does the province offer to investors?

With its mild climate and fertile land, Vinh Long has immense potential for agricultural production. Its major agricultural products include rice, speciality fruits, cereals, tra fish, other seafood items, cattle, and poultry. Rice is grown over nearly 60,000 hectares, meeting strict quality requirements for domestic consumption and export alike. The area for fruit orchards surpasses 44,000ha, generating more than 436,000 tonnes in annual production output, with well-known speciality fruit areas of high commercial value such as grapefruit and orange.

Vinh Long is currently home to some highly competitive industries such as footwear, textile and apparel, fine handicrafts, pharmaceuticals, brewing, and animal feed production.

In addition to the two operating industrial zones (IZs) Hoa Phu and Binh Minh, the province is in the legal setup stage and calling for investment into three more IZs, the planning schemes for which were already approved by the government, namely the 350ha Dong Binh IZ (Binh Minh), the 200ha An Dinh IZ (Mang Thit district), and the 400ha Binh Tan IZ (Binh Tan district). The planning schemes of various industrial clusters and craft production complexes in different districts, towns, and cities across the province were also approved and now await investment from investors and businesses.

In addition, being in the centre of major regional rivers and featuring a crowded river and stream network, Vinh Long is endowed with an evergreen ecosystem. These factors, paired with the distinctive local culture, have turned the province into an ideal venue for tourism development with a raft of local offerings such as garden and waterway tours, homestay tours, tours to craft villages, cultural and historical relics, and more.

Also, with a population of more than one million, over 60 per cent of whom are of working age, and a wide system of universities, colleges, and professional training schools, Vinh Long is ready to provide high-quality human resources to meet the growing needs of businesses and investors setting up shop in the province.

Many localities are paying heed to attracting new-generation foreign-invested projects focusing on added value production and new technologies. Is Vinh Long putting any particular focus on such investment?

Our province is keen on attracting sizeable projects of high motivating forces, particularly foreign-invested projects that employ state-of-the-art technologies, create added values, and do not harm the environment.

Projects that can tap into the province’s advantages while creating many jobs to local labourers, gearing local economic structure towards a positive direction, and producing competitive items, helping to stabilise the domestic market, and gradually replace imports are also welcomed.

How has the province been improving its investment environment?

Over the past year, parallel to the timely implementation of central-level investment incentive policies and mechanisms, Vinh Long has been trying its best to create an enabling environment to investors and businesses.

Investors are supported from the very beginning, from market research through conducting investment procedures until their projects are deployed. Various incentive policies are in place to facilitate investment inside and outside the IZs. In addition, the province supports investors through many programmes on investment and trade promotion and market connections.

The provincial management commits to creating an increasingly open investment climate to optimise investment capital efficiency, striving to turn Vinh Long into an attractive destination for businesses and investors.