Vietnam urged to 'carefully evaluate' foreign investments
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Vietnam needs to develop a set of standards to evaluate the effectiveness of foreign direct investment (FDI) to help policymakers improve the activities, a seminar held in the capital heard.
Ngo Doan Vinh, former head of the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Development Strategy Institute, said the project would meet requirements of marco-economic analysis.
Vinh said evaluation should include labour productivity, capital utilisation and contribution to the economy. Statistics from the ministry showed that by the end of last year, Vietnam attracted 13,500 FDI projects with registered capital of US$195.9 billion (Bt6 trillion) since the Foreign Investment Law was adopted in 1988. Of the total, disbursement capital made up $88.2 billion, accounting for 43 per cent.
The FDI sector has created jobs for around 2.3 million labourers, contributing to one-third of GDP, 40 per cent of industrial production value and more than 30 per cent of export turnover. However, the sector has also exposed shortcomings as some had not been suitable with industry development planning, importing backward machines and causing environmental concerns.
The Provincial Competiveness Index 2011 showed that foreign-invested enterprises were mostly small in scale and operated at low profits.
