Japanese firms wish to scale up business in Vietnam

Tidy profits have motivated around 64 percent of Japanese firms in Vietnam to consider expanding their business in the Southeast Asian country, according to the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO).

Last year, Japanese investors poured some 2.89 billion USD into 655 projects in Vietnam, up 1.9 percent in the number of projects as compared to 2018.

Sixty-six percent of Japanese investors reported good profits from their Vietnam operation in 2019, JETRO said.

Nakajima Takeo, Chief Representative of JETRO’s Hanoi Office, said along with the US-China trade war that has driven further investment into Vietnam, sound investment and business climate is behind the fact that more Japanese firms want to increase their presence in the country.

Vietnam has become a destination of Japanese businesses’ interest as the Government and local administrations have worked to remove bottlenecks for them in a timely manner, and it is proactively engaging in value chains of Japanese enterprises, he added.

A total of 38.02 billion USD of foreign direct investment (FDI) had been poured into Vietnam as of December 20, 2019, a 10-year high, according to the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The amount, representing a 7.2 percent increase on a yearly basis, included newly registered capital, additional capital to existing projects, and share purchase by foreign investors.

The Republic of Korea and Japan remained the largest investors of the nation.

Hanoi absorbed the lion’s share of the FDI flow with 8.45 billion USD or 22.2 percent of the total figure. It was followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 8.3 billion USD.

The disbursement of FDI capital also reached a record of 20.38 billion USD.