Promotion and supportive investment initiatives in the northern province of Vinh Phuc have yielded significant progress, heard a review conference in the province in mid-May.

In 2014, the province’s competitiveness index (PCI) ranked sixth among 63 provinces and cities nationwide, climbing 20 spots against previous year.

By end of April 2015, the province boasted 193 foreign direct investment projects with total registered investment capital of over 3.23 billion USD and 586 domestic-invested projects with combined registered investment capital of nearly 44 trillion VND (2 billion USD).

The province has attracted about 350 million USD in official development assistance from international funds and foreign countries including the World Bank, Asia Development Bank, Japan and Hungary since 2013.

Delegations at the event highlighted challenges hindering investors from operating business in the province such as higher land rent, limited social infrastructure and services and overlapping and ineffective State management of foreign-invested enterprises.

Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Phung Quang Hung said local governments should speed up overall administrative reform and create favourable conditions for enterprises to operate business effectively as well as strengthen manpower training to meet labour demand.-VNA