Prime Minister: Chinese businesses need to increase high-quality investment

At a meeting with Chinese businesses on August 26, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung said that the scope for cooperation between the two countries is still very large. In the new period, according to him, cooperation and investment between businesses of the two countries need to be “more quality, effective, and substantive”.

Accordingly, he suggested that Chinese businesses continue to identify Vietnam as a long-term investment, production and business area, while improving the quality of capital flows and advanced technology and spreading it to the domestic business sector.

Areas encouraged by the Vietnamese Government include strategic infrastructure connections, especially the Vietnam-China railway, urban railways, logistics, and smart border gates. Vietnam also wants Chinese investors to pour high-quality capital into areas such as clean energy; modern processing and manufacturing; digital economy, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, 5G, big data…

The Prime Minister expressed his wish that Chinese investors increase research and development (R&D), innovation, technology transfer and human resource training activities. At the same time, they need to create conditions for Vietnamese businesses to participate more deeply in the supply chain, thereby increasing the localization rate.

“Each project must be both effective for investors and contribute to the production capacity, technology, jobs, budget and development of Vietnamese businesses,” the Prime Minister said.

He also suggested that investors bring advanced technology and international management capacity into large-scale projects to create high-quality products.

At the meeting, Chinese businesses affirmed that Vietnam is an important market, and also informed about investment expansion plans and new cooperation projects. They also raised problems and proposed solutions to the Government, ministries and localities.

The Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Finance and other ministries to thoroughly handle the 44 recommendations of the Chinese business sector, avoiding shifting responsibility. In cases where multiple agencies are involved, the presiding unit, deadline and responsibility for handling must be clearly identified. Issues beyond authority need to be promptly reported to the Government and Prime Minister with a solution plan.

China is currently one of the major foreign investors in Vietnam. The total registered capital of this country’s investors in Vietnam in the first 7 months of this year reached nearly 3.7 billion USD. Chinese enterprises also ranked first in the number of new investment projects with about 850 projects.

Accumulated to the end of July, more than 7,000 projects of this country’s investors were still valid in Vietnam, with a total registered capital of nearly 37 billion USD. Capital flows are increasingly focused on processing, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, electronics and technology.

Two-way trade between Vietnam and China reached about 184.3 billion USD, an increase of more than 35% over the same period last year. China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner, while Vietnam is its largest partner in ASEAN.