In the eyes of investors, Can Tho is a consistently attractive destination with a dynamic economy and a friendly investment environment. As a dynamic city of the Mekong Delta, Can Tho is taking a new approach to attracting investment capital. Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mr Vo Thanh Sang, Director of Can Tho Department of Planning and Investment on the city’s solutions to attract investors into local competitive fields. Hong Hoa reports.
Could you brief on investment attraction results from early 2011 to date, especially FDI attraction? Can Tho holds advantage and strengths for industrial, processing, service and tourism development but the current development of these sectors does not come up with expectations and potentials. What solutions does Can Tho adopt to address these shortcomings?
After Can Tho was upgraded to the first-rate centrally governed city and functioned as the centre of the Mekong Delta, a lot of large, quality projects have been carried out here, including Can Tho Bridge, Can Tho International Airport, National Road 91B and, and Nam Song Hau Road. Traffic connections between Can Tho and major economic centres in the country are quite favourable. Therefore, the city attracted a lot of investment, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI). In 2011, the city licensed six new FDI projects with a total registered investment capital of US$138.23 million (up 5.4 times from 2010) and allowed three existing projects to add US$78.7 million to their projects. By the end of 2011, Can Tho had 53 FDI projects with a combined registered investment capital of US$956.64 million.
Defining its strengths and advantages of industry, processing, tourism and services development, the city is uniting rice, seafood, construction and consulting companies to form powerful business groups to compete with domestic and international rivals and build local brand names. It also encourages enterprises to boost investment for technological renovation, equipment upgrading, clean industrial development, cost-effective technological application.
In addition, it concentrates resources to develop industries with high-tech content, clean technology and low energy consumption to serve domestic and international markets. It effectively carries out major policies on sustainable domestic market development, export diversification and market expansion. It also encourages ecological industrial park investment, supporting industrial development, etc.
At present, Can Tho is a "showpiece" of many domestic and foreign investors. However, whether investors “shoot the arrows” to the "target point" or not depends on the attitude of “target layers.” So, how should Can Tho change to end investor hesitancy towards their coming to the city?
In the 2011 - 2015 period, Can Tho continues to invest in locally advantageous, competitive and potential areas like tourism, service, content industry, hi-tech industry, high-quality agricultural and seafood. To persuade investors to invest in these fields, the city will invest to build and upgrade essential infrastructure systems (airports, seaports, urban infrastructure, etc.). It will build and operate at least one centralised information technology park and invest in infrastructure systems for industrial parks, high-tech agricultural zones to meet local development requirements.
Currently, the city is calling VND28,187.75 billion (US$1.905 billion) for 25 key projects in five key fields: tourism and tourism infrastructure; high-tech industrial, agricultural and IT zone infrastructure; trade - industry; traffic infrastructure; and urban - residential zones and environment.
Investment attraction is adversely affected by global and domestic economic slowdown. How will the city do to catch the attention and interest of investors?
In the process of international economic integration, in addition to strategic visions and plans to boost business efficiency and maintain international market positions, enterprises need a favourable business environment. Knowing this importance, Can Tho City in general and the Department of Planning and Investment in particular are trying to accelerate administrative reform, improve the business environment, and attract all economic sectors to do business.
In 2011, the Department of Planning and Investment advised the Municipal People's Committee to issue the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development Support Plan for the 2011 - 2015 period. The support for SMEs will be done via policies covering finance, production premises, technological innovation, equipment, market expansion and labour training. They will be offered the best conditions to develop in quantity, quality and competitiveness to power up local socioeconomic development.
In addition, the department is asked the Can Tho People’s Committee to issue regulations on investment support to attract more investment capital and strengthen the investor confidence in the local business environment. Municipal authorities will meet regular meetings, dialogues with enterprises to listen to their problems and discuss solutions.
Besides, the city will continue stepping up the IT application to public administration to further support the development of private sector. This is considered an important measure to maintain and improve competitiveness in a sustainable way.
As a driving centre of the Mekong Delta, Can Tho City needs a new direction to attract investment capital and refresh its image in the eyes of investors?
In general, the city’s investment attraction has witnessed both advantages and difficulties in recent years. In that context, one of important tasks the city leaders are determined to do is to call investment capital in other provinces, cities in the country and foreign nations to uplift its prestige and position in the Mekong Delta region and on the national level.
From already-mapped directions, the city will step up local investment attraction and polish its profile on international arena. The locality will strengthen cooperation with domestic and foreign investment promotion agencies, organise trade promotion activities via the support of the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency and commercial counsellors in foreign nations to introduce strengths, potentials and investment opportunities in Can Tho.
Last but not least, the city will introduce policies to attract talents for investment promotion activities; develop human resources to meet new development requirements; and take advantage of available information channels to attract more investors.
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