Taiwan invested about US$400 million in Vietnam in the first quarter of this year, making it the third-largest source of foreign investment in that nation during the period, according to data from the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.
The investments by Taiwanese businesses accounted for 9.6 percent of all foreign investment in Vietnam in the January-to-March period, behind only South Korea, which invested US$513.5 million and had a 12.7 percent share, and Singapore, which invested US$449.3 million and had an 11.1 percent share.
The Vietnamese government approved 473 proposals for new investment by foreign businesses totaling US$2.74 billion and 203 proposals by foreign businesses to expand investment worth US$1.29 billion in the first three months of this year.
The processing and manufacturing sectors drew US$2.98 billion in foreign investment in the three-month period, or 72.2 percent of the total.
The real-estate sector received investments of US$239.8 million, or 5.9 percent of the total.
Foreign capital is flowing into Vietnam because of the creation of the ASEAN economic community which has created a free-trade bloc in the region, economists said.
The Vietnamese government’s pursuit of free-trade deals, including its bid to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has also appealed to foreign investors, economists said.
However, economists are concerned over the nation’s bureaucratic approach to handling foreign investment projects and its poor basic infrastructure, saying that improvements made by the Vietnamese government in these areas have yet to meet the expectations and needs of foreign businesses.
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