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| US businesses eager to expand investment in Vietnam |
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| May 7, 2007 |
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VietNamNet Bridge - Representatives of 18 US heavyweights present at a two-day business forum in Hanoi have pointed to Vietnam as a country ripe for drawing foreign investment.
"I think the reason American investors are looking to Vietnam, not only for its great investment environment, various opportunities, but also because of the country?s stable growth," said Franches A. Zwenig, Councilor of the US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC), at a press briefing on May 4.
During the first trip to Vietnam since the US?s normalisation of trade relations with the country, the delegation, mostly consisting of chiefs of US leading groups in information technology, telecommunications, energy, infrastructure and aircraft engineering namely Boeing, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobile and Universal Telecom Services, paid a courtesy visit to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and met with senior officials.
Virginia Foote, President of the US-Vietnam Trade Council, told a Vietnam News Agency reporter that all of the companies in the delegation are already in some way involved in Vietnam.
"All of them would like to build investment here, yet some of the discussions were how the environment here can be improved so that investment can grow," asserted Foote, who is also President of the Vietnam Partners LLC, a US bank working exclusively in Vietnam. Areas that need attention include human resources development, infrastructure and laws, she added.
Foote said that a lot of US companies, including well-known Conoco Phillips and Exxon Mobile, are eyeing infrastructure projects for development of power, pipelines, roads, ports and airports in Vietnam, most of which are now funded by Official Development Assistance (ODA). "They can be privately funded and don?t require ODA. There is a great interest [among US companies] in becoming involved," she said.
As President of the Vietnam Partners LLC, she said she is now travelling around the world looking for investment capital for Vietnam and continuing the work of "marketing" Vietnam to global investors, a job that she has been doing for over 20 years.
"It?s a wonderful, fascinating experience for me to work in Vietnam," she explained, adding that one of the things that is so interesting about the country is that "you can see, measure and work on change and progress."
Foote pointed to Vietnam's indicators for development such as poverty reduction and improvement in education plus the annual growth rate steadying around 8 percent. 2005 saw Vietnam's economy at the fastest pace in almost a decade at close to 8.4 percent and experts have predicted the country to maintain close to that for the next three years at least.
Colin Low, President of General Electric Corporation (GE), who is in charge of technology and global financial service in Singapore, the Phillipines and Vietnam, asserted that "Vietnam is already on the road to development, we have already seen brighter opportunities for our business in the country."
This attitude was also voiced by Ms. Zwenig, head of the US delegation, who said "We hope to be the number one investor in Vietnam in the near future."
During the two-day visit, US businessmen also met with senior Vietnamese goverment officials on Vietnam's development strategy and planning, trade policies, administrative reform and fighting corruption. They also heard Vietnamese legislators discuss law making and the fulfillment of WTO commitments.
Prominent among US giants present at the delegation include Boeing, Chevron, Cocono Phillips, Exxon Mobile, Ford, General Electric, and IBM.
(Source: VNA) |
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