Long An province works to attract quality investments

ABO/VNA – Long An province, located in the southern key economic region, has reaped encouraging outcomes in investment attraction, and it will press on with concrete solutions to attract more quality projects in the time ahead, authorities said.

Long An province is working to attract more quality projects in the time ahead (Photo: VNA)

Long An has set up cooperative relations with foreign localities like Hyogo prefecture of Japan, Chungcheongnam-do province of the Republic of Korea, and Sacramento city of the US. It has also attracted many major investors, including the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park JV Co. Ltd of Singapore, Sojitz of Japan, and local conglomerate Vingroup.

The province is now home to more than 1,500 Vietnamese projects worth over 181 trillion VND (7.75 billion USD) and 941 FDI ones with total capital of nearly 6 billion USD, according to the provincial Department of Planning and Investment.

Aside from attracting investment, local authorities have also increased examining sluggish projects. As of early October, they revoked 11 foreign invested projects worth 40 million USD and 29 domestic ones worth almost 1.9 trillion VND (81.4 million USD), citing investors’ lack of capacity.

Director of the department Nguyen Van Tieu said despite certain successes in investment attraction, the quality of many projects is not high. Most of them are small- or medium-sized, with capital of about 136 billion VND (5.8 million USD) per domestic project and 5.2 billion USD per FDI project. They focus on labour-intensive industries such as textile-garment and footwear, and few have specialised in supporting and hi-tech industries.

He said to attract more quality investments, local authorities will boost administrative reforms to create favourable conditions for investors to implement their projects.

Aside from strictly dealing with projects with slow implementation, they will also accelerate developing infrastructure, especially transport facilities and seaports.

Long An will step up investment promotion in suitable forms and prioritise major projects that are environmentally friendly and have high added value, Tieu noted, adding that authorities will also maintain dialogue with businesses to tackle obstacles to their activities in a timely manner.

(Source: VNA)