Foreign investors poured a total of 12.63 billion USD in Vietnam during the past eight months, an increase of 19.5 percent over the same period last year.

The Foreign Investment Agency ( FIA ) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment reports that as of August 20, nearly 770 new projects were licensed representing registered capital of over 7.4 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 12.2 percent.

At the same time, 296 projects contributed an additional 5.22 billion USD in capital, 31.7 percent higher than the previous period.

The FIA says foreign investment was funnelled into 18 industries, of which processing and manufacturing took the lead with 370 newly registered projects worth 10.817 billion USD, accounting for 85 percent of total foreign investment capital.

The real estate sector ranked second with more than 588 million USD, representing 4.7 percent of the total flow.

Japan is the largest of Vietnam’s 47 foreign investors with 4.35 billion USD (34.5 percent of the total), followed by Singapore (3.78 billion USD, 29.9 percent) and Russia (1 billion USD, 8.1 percent).

Foreign businesses have invested in 50 cities and provinces across the country, not including offshore oil projects.

With an additional 2.8 billion USD in investment for the Nghi Son oil refinery, the central province of Thanh Hoa received the largest amount of FDI (an increase of 23.3 percent).

It was followed by the northern mountainous province of Thai Nguyen with 2.185 billion USD, while the Red River Delta province of Bac Ninh came third with 1.39 billion USD.

FDI disbursement in the period stood at 7.560 billion USD, up 3.8 percent from last year.

The FDI sector’s export earnings surged 21.7 percent against last year’s level to more than 7.56 billion USD, accounting for 66.1 percent of Vietnam ’s total export revenue.

It imported 48.297 billion USD worth of goods, again representing 66.1 percent of the national total and up 25.1 percent on 2012.-VNA