Statisticsfrom the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning andInvestment show that as many as 742 projects worth over 11 billion USDrun by US firms were being operated in Vietnam by the end of May thisyear.
More projects will follow. The Intel Group, for example,intends to shift its production activities from Malaysia to Vietnam dueto Vietnam’s low-cost human resources, as it further promotes itssignificant investment in the country.
Half of Intel’s 1 billionUSD chip manufacturing factory project in Vietnam has beendeveloped, positively contributing to the country’s socio-economicdevelopment.
Since the US removed its trade embargo againstVietnam in 1995, and after the two countries signed a Bilateral TradeAgreement (BTA) in 2001 , a series of major American firms, includingCoca-Cola, PepsiCo, IBM, Cargill, Microsoft, Citigroup, Chevron, Ford,GE, AES, and UPS have accessed the Vietnamese market.
BothCoca-Cola and PepsiCo have run factories in Vietnam since the mid 1990sand have come to dominate the local beverage market.
In 2010, PepsiCo funnelled an additional 250 million USD into Vietnam,and two years later it repurchased San Miguel’s Dong Nai factory andopened a Bac Ninh province-based 70 million USD plant; the largest inSoutheast Asia.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has made a total investmentof 500 million USD in Vietnam. Last year, the firm inaugurated four newproduction facilities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Procter& Gamble Vietnam Ltd (P&G Vietnam), one of the first UScompanies to invest in Vietnam , started the construction of aGillette plant worth 100 million USD in southern Binh Duong provinceat the end of March this year.
According to Hatsunori Kiriyama,President of P&G in the Asian-Pacific region , this i s part ofthe long-term plan on building sustainable facilities to supply P&Gproducts in Vietnamese and Asian markets .
After 20 years ofits operation in Vietnam, P&G’s current total investment in Vietnamnow totals more than 300 million USD.
Microsoft now owns amobile phone production plant worth over 300 million USD in northern BacNinh province. Last year, the firm’s export value reached 2 billionUSD and it plans to transfer its manufacturing plants from othercountries to Vietnam, making the country its production place.
TheVietnamese market is more and more attractive to foreign investors,especially those from the US, as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)agreement will officially comes into effect in the near future.Negotiations of other free trade agreements between Vietnam and itsforeign partners also help increase the interest of US firms in thecountry.
This is proven by the fact that an increasing number ofUS business delegations, who are members of the US-ASEAN businessCouncil, have visited Vietnam to seek opportunities here.-VNA