Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Nov.12 (VNA) -- Effectively streamlining administrative procedures, organising on-line dialogues with businesses, improving and diversifying information services, and drawing up list of projects calling for investment attached with preferential treatment are measures taken promptly by Ho Chi Minh City's authorities in a bid to lure more foreign investment.

In the first ten months of this year, the city attracted 186 foreign-invested projects capitalised at 254 million USD, a 35.2 percent increase year on year.

It is forecast that the total foreign investment pouring into the city would reach 500 million USD by the end of this year, or 50 percent of the set target of 1 billion USD, said Dao Xuan Duc, Deputy Head of the Investment Promotion Section of the Municipal Planning and Investment Department.

The figure showed a sharp decline compared with that in the 1996-97 period when the city attracted more than 2 billion USD a year.

At a seminar on foreign investment promotion held in the city last month, Lawson Dixon, Executive General Director of DY&R Viet Nam company, pointed out that the global economy has recently registered a slowdown, thus affecting Ho Chi Minh City's economy. However, the city still remains an attractive destination for foreign investors with its own advantages in location and human resources, he said.

With a population of 6 million people, Ho Chi Minh City is the country's biggest consumer market and it provides a contingent of skilled and dynamic workforce and a well-developed commodity distribution system. The city's per capita income and purchasing power quadruple the national average.

In addition, with the best infrastructure facilities in the country, the city is home to many industrial zones, commercial and financial companies, banks, and insurers.

To bring into full play the city's advantages, much remains to be done, said Nguyen Tran Khanh, first Deputy Chairman of the Municipal Investment Consultation and Technology Transfer Company, at the seminar.

It is decisive to create favourable conditions and promptly address difficulties for foreign-invested enterprises, Khanh said, explaining that potential investors who come to explore investment opportunities in Viet Nam often inquire into the country's investment climate through operating FDI enterprises' performance.

The fact shows that the work has proven more effective than sending investment promotion missions abroad, he underscored.

In the coming years, Ho Chi Minh City will make a lot of changes in its policy on foreign investment, pledged Nguyen Thien Nhan, HCMC Vice Mayor, noting that the city will immediately revise a mechanism on land allocation to investors, which used to be the investors' time-consuming work, and assist foreign-invested enterprises in reducing the production cost while increasing their competitiveness.

In preparation for the city's management personnel, around 1,000 managers will be trained by 2003.

The city has cooperated with Japanese partners to upgrade its transport network and raise the efficiency of its infrastructure in the period till 2004, including the development of an overhead railway and an underground metro system, and the improvement of the public bus network.