Singaporean investors ready to pour billions of dollars into Vietnam

Many Singaporean businesses say they are ready to invest tens of billions of USD in Vietnam to anticipate upcoming FTAs.

With new opportunities opening up with a series of free trade agreements (FTAs), Vietnam continues to be highly appreciated by Singaporean businesses for its potential and is considered one of the upcoming destinations.

Singaporean investors have diversified their investment fields in Vietnam (Illustration photo: DNSG)

For a long time, Singapore has always been among Vietnam’s major trade and investment partners. With geographical proximity and convenient air traffic, businesses of the two countries have continuously promoted trade and investment cooperation activities.

Currently, many Singaporean enterprises investing in Vietnam share that their business activities are profitable. A typical example is the investor of Vietnam - Singapore Industrial Park. This unit is investing in 7 industrial parks in Vietnam, attracting over 8 billion USD in investment, creating jobs for more than 155,000 workers.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bill Stoops, representative of Dragon Capital, revealed that this fund has 1 billion USD available and is ready to invest in financial and banking companies, because investors are very optimistic about the potential of the Vietnamese market.

Not stopping at current results, Singaporean enterprises are still quietly looking for new business opportunities.

In the first months of 2016, the real estate market continuously received information that many Singaporean investors were among the investors conducting mergers and acquisitions with Vietnamese partners. The most prominent was the deal of Keppel Land buying 40% of the Empire City project in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, equivalent to 93.9 million USD. This transaction was recorded as the largest value in the first quarter of 2016.

Notably, Singaporean enterprises have invested in almost all economic sectors of Vietnam, from oil and gas exploration, industrial production to agricultural, forestry and seafood processing. In particular, this investor also focuses on many activities in the fields of infrastructure, services and real estate business.

According to Ms. Koh Chong Yu, Director of the International Enterprise Development Agency (IE Singapore) in Ho Chi Minh City, Singaporean enterprises are interested in the fields of food, lifestyle, tourism, services, etc. in Vietnam and hope to support Vietnamese enterprises to gradually participate in the global supply chain.

According to the assessment of the Foreign Investment Agency, if in the past, Singapore's investment in Vietnam was only concentrated in a few large provinces and cities with favorable socio-economic infrastructure conditions such as Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Binh Duong, etc., in recent years, the investment areas of Singaporean enterprises in Vietnam have spread to many other provinces and cities. Currently, Singaporean investors have invested in 46/63 provinces and cities nationwide.

Mr. Huynh Duy Khuong, Vice President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said that according to the General Department of Customs, bilateral trade in goods between Vietnam and Singapore always accounts for a large proportion of the country's total import and export turnover.

Currently, Singapore is Vietnam's largest trading partner, behind only China, Japan, the United States, and South Korea. In the ASEAN region, Singapore is Vietnam's largest trading partner.

In the first 6 months of 2016, Vietnam exported 1.076 billion USD worth of goods to Singapore and imported 2.57 billion USD from the neighboring country. Vietnam is exporting to Singapore mainly crude oil, computers, electronic products and components, machinery and equipment; and importing petroleum, computers, electronic products and components, petroleum products, raw plastics, machinery, etc.

According to data from the Foreign Investment Agency, Ministry of Planning and Investment, as of June 2016, Singapore is ranked 3rd in the list of foreign investors in Vietnam with 1,643 valid projects, with a total registered investment capital of 37.9 billion USD.

In the first 6 months of 2016, there were 119 newly registered investment projects of Singaporean enterprises with capital of 1.13 billion USD, mainly focusing on the fields of processing industry, waste treatment, and real estate./.

According to VOV