The southern province of Dong Nai, one of the country’s leading FDIreceivers over the past years, is determined to reject infeasibleforeign-invested projects for a more sound investment climate.
The province now has 1,080 valid projects valued at more than 20 billion USD after 25 years of FDI attraction.
Although the number of FDI enterprises accounts for one tenth of allbusinesses operating in the province, foreign-invested firms havecontributed 92 percent to the locality’s volume of exports, generatingjobs for over 450,000 labourers.
However, the province stillhas around 10 green-field (FDI) projects that have not been implementedafter more than a year since receiving investment licences, said Mai VanNhon, deputy head of the provincial management board overseeingindustrial parks (IPs).
To date, the province has also seen47 FDI projects valued at more than 100 million USD in total, abandonedby their investors. Most of the projects were in debt to their partners,local commercial banks and labourers, causing negative impacts on theprovince’s investment environment.
Since the 1990s, it haswithdrawn investment permits granted to 186 FDI projects with a totalinvestment capital of nearly 1.3 billion USD.
Nhon said themajority of the projects whose investment licences were revoked by theprovince are small-scale, adding that this is one of the measures toimprove the local investment climate.
He added that themanagement board has worked with relevant agencies to handle the assetsand land rented by 17 FDI projects abandoned, withdrawing theirinvestment permits. The province is also considering other measures totackle the remaining abandoned FDI projects.
By attractingFDI in a selective manner, the province has drawn a number of projectsin high technology and support industry, like Pegasus-Shimamoto AutoParts Vietnam Co., Ltd, Fuji Vietnam Co., Ltd, and Inoue Rubber VietnamJSC.
To fulfil this year’s target of attracting around 900million USD in FDI, Dong Nai promulgated many investment incentives.
Particularly, newly foreign-invested projects and those withadditional investment will be exempted from corporate income tax in thefirst two years of operation and get a 50 percent reduction in the foursubsequent years, while the common tax rate imposed on investmentprojects in local IPs will drop to 22 percent from 25 percent.
In addition, the province has established an office to directlysupport foreign investors and provided small and medium-sized FDIenterprises with special assistance related to investment licences.
Nhon also affirmed that Dong Nai has completed the construction ofinfrastructure in IPs and will give priority to high-tech,environmentally friendly projects and those in the fields of servicesand infrastructure investment.-VNA