Mr Phan Huu Thang President of the International Investment Research Institute ISC Encourage responsible business ventures

Mr Phan Hữu Thắng

How has the chaotic world economy affected Vietnam’s FDI attraction, sir?

Amid the constant global fluctuation, big countries must rethink their own strategies, including trade and investment. Every country must produce, survive, and take care of social security. Many factors are currently affecting the trend of FDI shifting globally, hindering FDI inflows into Vietnam. However, Vietnam has emerged as one of the stable and promising economies, still attracting a large amount of FDI thanks to a stable socio-political environment, a large market, and abundant human resources. Many large FDI projects are still pouring into Vietnam despite the Covid-19 epidemic.

With an important strategic position adjacent to China, a source of goods and raw materials on a large scale and a large market, investors own many benefits of transportation costs and stable connections of supply chains in China. The government and businesses of the US, Japan, Korea and the EU have all assessed that Vietnam has many favorable conditions to receive investment transfers from China.

Despite severe hits to the economy, the Covid-19 pandemic also created opportunities to accelerate the speed of digital transformation in all fields and localities. This is the driving force to create a future leap in labor productivity, enabling Vietnam to attract investment with high-technology content.

So in your opinion, to attract quality FDI projects or responsible business projects and new billion-dollar capital sources in 2023, what should Vietnam do?

To attract quality FDI or responsible business projects, Vietnam lacks detailed guidelines or tools to support the screening, assessment and appraisal of investment projects in different regions. To properly comply with the law and to include new criteria in the selection of foreign direct investment projects, it is necessary to encourage responsible business projects that positively contribute to the local economy, society and environment.

Currently, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, relevant ministries and branches need to focus on building, completing and deploying the investment project-screening toolkit to appraise FDI projects in localities. In addition, it is also necessary to actively advise on building a legal framework for attracting investment projects, especially responsible business ones.

We must choose projects and partners suitable for Vietnam’s conditions and not make mistakes in project selection. But on the other hand, the government should promote the development of the private economy to implement supporting industries and new industrial fields to improve the selection of quality projects that Vietnam now needs to be ahead of in terms of new technologies.

Besides, it is also necessary to have a plan for attracting FDI methodically based on the reality of Vietnam. In detail, we must determine where the incentives are, which areas to attract capital, which industries, where the locations are… instead of general incentives.

Thank you Sir!