Appraisal of foreign direct investment this year will be made with more prudence, with an aim to attract those projects with sound financial strength, being more environment-friendly and having better technology, said a senior official.

Nguyen Bich Van, deputy general director of the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, told a meeting here that authorities would further tighten the appraisal criteria to bring about better economic and social benefits.

“The foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction targets the business groups and partners able to have funds and technology to implement their projects and meet criteria for the environment,” Van told the function titled “The Coming Year’s outlook: Targeting Markets and Partners in Times of Global Economic Recession” in HCMC on Friday evening.

She said priority was also given to the investors who will transfer technology to their local partners and help the country’s industries quickly integrate into the global value chains.

Van said though Vietnam had made records in FDI attraction, the country was facing rising problems in relation to environmental pollution, outdated technology, the financial capacity of investors, inefficient use of land for certain mega projects, and low valued-added products.

Van said greater efforts would center on removing the brakes on the pace of FDI projects to help put them on a fast track and to boost capital disbursement of the projects which have been licensed over the past two years.

Figures of the agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment show the FDI commitment last year outpaced projections to more than US$64 billion, which was over three times the US$20.3 billion that foreign investors pledged in the year before.

Last year also saw FDI disbursement reach a new high of US$11.5 billion, or US$3.5 billion higher in 2007 and US$6.9 billion more than in 2006. The target for this year was at least the same as in 2008, Van said.

“(We) must try out best to ensure the FDI disbursement will be the same as in 2008 even though doing this is more difficult this year than last year,” she said. She noted the FDI inflow into Vietnam this year was forecast to be much lower than in last year.

Nguyen The Hung, acting director of the Southern Foreign Investment Center (SFIC), told the Daily after the seminar that the FDI disbursement was more important to Vietnam than the pledged capital as it supported the country’s growth and helped create jobs for locals.

Van said to make sure that new goals would be realized, FDI attraction and promotion would focus on such major markets as Japan, the United States and European Union as well as new markets including Russia and the Middle East.

However, Herb Cochran, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in HCMC, informed the participants at the get-together of the closure of more stores in that selected market and the other woes the U.S. is coping with.

Hirota Nakanishi, senior investment advisor at the Japan External Trade Organization’s office in HCMC, raised concern that attracting FDI from Japan this year was not easy given the problems the companies were dealing with in the face of global economic slump.

Moreover, Nakanishi insisted Viet Nam develop a supporting industry otherwise the country would lose its competitiveness to other regional countries in attracting Japanese companies.

Nakanishi said Viet Nam attracted US$7.2 billion of Japanese investment in different fields including oil refinery, manufacturing, part assembling, textile, and food in 2008. This year, Japanese investors were keen on distribution, retail (as the country has opened up this market to foreign companies), merger and acquisition, he told the Daily at the event.

The event was held to mark the fifth anniversary of SFIC. There, Hung said 22 localities in southern Viet Nam had attracted US$84.5 billion from 1988 to 2008, or more than 56% of the whole country’s attraction of nearly US$150 billion. (SGT)