Foreign investors have chosen to invest their money in other provinces and cities during the first months of this year in place of major cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The movement demonstrates the considerable improvement in provinces and cities’ investment environment over the past time.

In enhancing their investment climate, localities spared no efforts to reform investment policies in combination with bringing into play their natural and social advantages.

As a result, Thanh Hoa in the central region, and Thai Nguyen and Bac Ninh in the north have become leading localities in FDI attraction in the reviewed period.

With an additional investment of 2.8 billion USD poured into the Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical Complex, the central province of Thanh Hoa becomes Vietnam’s leading locality in FDI attraction – a significant leap from its 28th spot in late 2012.

The central province, with 2.815 billion USD in both newly registered and additional FDI capital, accounted for 23.6 percent of the national figure.

Thai Nguyen also climbed from its 38 th position at the end of 2012 to the second place with newly registered and additional investment totalling 2.158 billion USD. At the same time, Bac Ninh drew 1.377 billion USD in newly registered and additional investment capital, going from 6 th (late 2012) to third position.

According to Deputy Director of the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) Nguyen Ba Cuong, the shift of FDI flow in Vietnam is attributable to foreign enterprises’ realisation of localities’ potential to create high investment returns.

The provinces and cities also have numerous advantages in large land resources, a profuse workforces plus attractive investment policies.

In bettering the investment climate and attracting more FDI, many preferential policies will be put forth to encourage the support industry in the coming time, said the FIA.

Vietnam will also implement a wide range of stimulating measures such as adjusting criteria on high-tech investment attraction in line with Vietnam’s conditions, rescheduling the roadmap to raise land lease fees, perfecting legal framework and policy, and forming a foreign investment database.

The recent FDI shift of foreign investors may help narrow the development gap between Vietnamese localities, create jobs for rural people and lessen social pressure caused by labourers’ migration from rural to urban areas in the past.

However, to make the movement effective, localities need to closely control issues on environmental protection and foreign investors’ capacity to execute projects and disburse capital for their projects.-VNA