Luring FDI takes centre stage at MPI seminar

MPI Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Trung told the seminar in Ho Chi Minh City that Vietnam has shifted FDI attraction efforts to green technology, hi-tech, capital-intensive sectors, and discouraging environment polluting FDI, out-of-date technologies. He added the Vietnamese government last August issued Resolution No103 on orientations to improve the efficiency of FDI attraction, use and management in the coming time. The resolution confirms that FDI is an important resource of the Vietnamese economy, and the “foreign-invested sector” is part of the Vietnamese economy. However, Vietnam needs to better deal with signs of using transfer pricing for tax evasions. FDI high-profile expert Prof. Nguyen Mai said as for today’s situation, it was necessary to have new thoughts and actions on FDI. He elaborated it was necessary to make right assessments on FDI impacts as there are also opinions that FDI have also caused some obstacles to local businesses and Vietnam should shift its focus to promoting local enterprises. As for policy, he emphasised that it is necessary to amend and supplement preferential policies for FDI projects in the principle of offering incentives based on sectors and regions. The professor said a survey on more than 8,000 Vietnamese private firms and 1,540 foreign-invested enterprises announced last March by the Vietnam of Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that the local and foreign firms shared a view that administrative procedures in business registration, tax, customs, land, environment, construction and some others were bottlenecks that should be removed to improve Vietnam’s investment environment. Like Prof. Mai, Dr. Christian Kamm, president of the US-based Kamm Investment Inc., said research across the world had proven that countries with a long standing policy of promoting FDI were the great beneficiaries of FDI. “It is easy to see that countries which do not place attracting FDI at the top of their priorities through the formulation of laws and regulations conducive to attract FDI will not normally attract a great deal of it,” he said. Do Nhat Hoang, director of the MPI’s Foreign Investment Department, said orientations on FDI attraction in the future were stated clearly in the Resolution 103, which included selecting high quality and added value projects using modern and environmentally friendly technologies. Another orientation is to promote FDI attraction right inside Vietnam by focusing promotion activities in localities as Vietnam’s FDI promotion missions overseas have been not of high effectiveness as expected. As for better FDI administration, Hoang said intensifying inspection and supervision of investment activities was a must. The investment certification agencies must strengthen inspection and supervision of foreign-invested projects, the licensing process and post-licensing management.