September's foreign direct investment (FDI) reached over 1 billion USD, bringing the total nine-month FDI in Vietnam to 9.52 billion USD, said the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The figure is equivalent to 72.1 percent of the amount in the same period last year.

The processing industry and manufacturing attracted the most FDI, with over 6.2 billion USD, which accounts for 65.5 percent of the total registered capital so far, the agency reported.

Real estate saw a total registered capital of over 1.8 billion USD, while other areas including wholesale, retail and media attracted only over 400 million USD.

FIA reported that Japan by far registered the highest amount of investment with 4.7 billion USD, followed by Samoa and the Republic of Korea with 899 million USD and 711 million USD, respectively.

However, September's FDI disbursements only hit 820 million USD, which was the lowest level during the last five months, said FIA.

FDI disbursement during the first nine months recorded 8.1 billion USD, equal to 98.8 percent of the level in the same period of last year./.VNA