Approximately 7.9 billion USD was disbursed in foreign direct investment (FDI) all over Vietnam by August 20, up by 4.5 percent compared to last year, the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency said.

The agency’s experts attributed this to the rapid implementation of major projects licensed in recent years.

They foresee FDI disbursement for the entire year to total approximately 12.5 billion USD, a 8.7 percent rise compared to 2013.

However, newly registered FDI decreased by 19 percent in the first eight months of 2014, totalling 10.2 billion USD, which was spread across 992 new projects and 349 existing ones.

Deputy Director of the agency Nguyen Noi said this decline was due to a drop in the number of major projects this year.
He for his part predicted the total FDI registered at 17–18 billion USD for 2014, meeting the annual target but only representing 80 percent of the sum generated in 2013.

During the first eight months, FDI companies earned approximately 65.23 billion USD from shipping commodities abroad, including crude oil, which rose by 15.6 percent compared to 2013, and accounted for 67.3 percent of Vietnam’s export revenue.

The FDI sector’s imports were estimated at 53.37 billion USD, up by 10.9 percent, and accounting for 56 percent of the country’s total imports.-VNA