The northeastern province of Quang Ninh granted licences for four foreign-invested projects worth 412 million USD in the first nine months of this year, 15 times the value of projects approved in 2011.

The increase is attributed to the province’s natural conditions, which facilitate economic and socio-cultural development, as well as an improved investment climate and additional incentives.

Quang Ninh is currently home to 93 valid foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, with a total registered capital of 4.2 billion USD.

The US leads 17 countries and territories with investment in six provincial projects, accounting for 2.4 billion USD of registered capital, or 59 percent of the total FDI in Quang Ninh.

FDI comes at different phases and each phase varies in project quality. The majority of Quang Ninh’s FDI projects stem from Asia . China and Hong Kong account for 57 percent of the province’s total investment projects but only 18 percent of total registered capital. In other word, they are small-scale projects. Meanwhile nations such as Germany , the UK and Japan with financial and high-technology expertise invest a moderate figure.

To achieve the province’s socio-economic development targets, Quang Ninh needs both the further involvement of the FDI business sector and improved quality of FDI activities in its economy, said Do Minh Tuan, Deputy Director of the Quang Ninh Provincial Department of Planning and Investment.

Quang Ninh aims to renew its economic growth model from extensive to intensive development relying on efficiency, productivity, competitiveness and quality products, instead of attracting investment capital, exploiting natural resources and using manual labour, and will call for investment along this direction.

In addition, the province sets the target to increase the quality and scale of each investment project, striving to raise the technological content of each project to 40 or 50 percent of the value, switching focus from heavy industry to hi-tech supporting industries in order to mitigate negative impacts on the environment, reduce raw exports and fully utilise the tourism potential of Ha Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay.

It has offered detailed incentives to businesses participating in 18 key projects in the five key areas of tourism and entertainment services; seaport, border gate and logistic systems; trade; infrastructure; training and high-quality human resource services.

Secretary of the Quang Ninh provincial Party Committee, Pham Minh Chinh, stressed that the province recognises the importance of improving the investment climate to draw FDI, ODA and investment from private sector into Quang Ninh.

This will be the foundation to create a breakthrough in attracting FDI to Quang Ninh in the future.-VNA