Strategically situated between Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, with constant efforts to improve the investment and business environment, Long An province has become a leading light in investment attraction. Vietnam Business Forum Magazine has an exclusive interview with Mr Nguyen Van Tieu, Director of the Long An Department of Planning and Investment, on investment attraction results and orientations of the province. Quoc Hung reports.
Could you please briefly present the investment attraction results of Long An province in recent years, especially in the first months of 2016?
In spite of global and domestic economic slowdown, Long An province has still achieved positive results in investment attraction thanks to its ongoing efforts in administration, investment promotion and investment attraction. Specifically, the province licensed 53 new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with a combined registered capital of US$180.5 million, and allowed 32 existing projects to add US$221.8 million to their capital base in the first six months of 2016. Compared with the same period in 2015, the province saw an increase of 10 projects, but witnessed a drop of US$160 million in investment capital. To date, Long An has 739 FDI projects with US$4,976 million, of which 434 projects with US$2,850 million have gone into operation.
On domestic investment attraction, the province permitted 195 projects with VND20,205 billion in the January-June period of 2016, of which VND19,546 billion came from fresh projects and VND678 billion came from seven projects, but two DDI projects cut VND19 billion of their investment value. Compared with the corresponding period of 2015, the locality witnessed an increase of 52 projects and VND1,326 billion of investment value. To date, Long An has 1,165 DDI projects capitalised at VND133,175 billion.
How could Long An province achieve such results in the face of tough economic context?
Those results came from various factors, but in my opinion the first and foremost is the close leadership and direction of the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial People’s Council, plus the efforts and determinations of all-tiers of government and branches in implementing socio-economic development policies. The province clearly defined the importance of investment attraction and focused on supporting investors and businesses to deal with difficulties in investing activities.
Specifically, carrying out State investment promotion and incentive policies fully and timely according to the Law on Investment and other relevant legal documents.
Introducing solutions for a better investment environment where administrative procedure reform and service time reduction are the focus; reviewing service processes and time required for handling legal procedures for enterprises. The province always takes the satisfaction of citizens and businesses as the gauge of administrative reform, so as to keep its high competitiveness index.
Provincial leaders and relevant authorities often host meetings and dialogues with businesses to learn about their opinions, aspirations and difficulties in order to provide better service and support them to surmount their troubles and overcome local weaknesses, especially in the sense of responsibility, service standards and professionalism.
Project that have been idled or which are slow-moving are a common issue in many localities. How is this problem in Long An province? How does the province deal with such cases?
In the past time, after examining and reviewing slow-moving projects, the province revoked many large-scale projects (mainly real estate business projects). Therefore, land-intensive projects are on a downtrend. A majority of sluggish projects get stuck in site clearance, land compensation and foundation processing. Most projects attribute their difficulties to overall economic slowdown, hard credit access, production and consumption. In addition, some investors lack the capability to carry out their projects.
Project inspection and review is a regular work of the province. The first objective of this work is to clear difficulties and obstacles in the way and accelerate project implementation. However, the province resolutely revokes investment licences from incapable investors. At the same time, Long An province has created favourable conditions for investors to speed up project implementation.
How will investment attraction orientations of Long An province develop in the coming time?
Long An province can attract investors into all three sectors: agriculture, forestry and fisheries; construction and industry; and trade, services and tourism. In the coming time, the province will base on its advantages to draw more investors, select investment projects with high added value and modern technology; develop infrastructure, train high-quality human resources and research and develop modern services.
- By sector: The province will focus on attracting investment capital into infrastructure, supporting industries, high-tech organic farming, processing industry and aquaculture. At the same time, the province will target projects to utilise new advantages when Vietnam joins the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) like garment, footwear, seafood and agricultural product.
- By partner: The province will pick up partners to serve its long-term development orientations. It will target investors from countries with comprehensive cooperation programmes with Vietnam or those signing bilateral and multilateral treaties with Vietnam. It will give priority to projects using high tech, creating added values and tapping local advantages; speed up supporting industries to engage in global value chains; enhance the competitiveness of domestic consumer products and replace imports; create jobs; and limit environmental pollution and save energy.
On that basis, Long An province will attract Japanese investors into agricultural and aquatic product processing, agricultural machinery, electronics, automobile and parts manufacturing, shipbuilding, environmental and energy-efficient industry, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and attract South Korean investors into electronics, mechanical manufacturing, energy, heavy industries, industrial equipment, agricultural and aquatic product processing.
Vietnamese
