Tidy profits have motivated around 64 percent of Japanese firms in Vietnam to consider expanding their business in the country.

Last year, Japanese investors poured some 2.89 billion USD into 655 projects inVietnam, up 1.9 percent in the number of projects as compared to 2018.

Sixty-six percent of Japanese investors reported good profits from theirVietnam operation in 2019, JETRO said.

Nakajima Takeo, Chief Representative of JETRO’s Hanoi Office, said along withthe US-China trade war that has driven further investment into Vietnam, soundinvestment and business climate is behind the fact that more Japanese firms want to increase their presence in the country.

Vietnam has become a destination of Japanese businesses’ interest as theGovernment and local administrations have worked to remove bottlenecks for themin a timely manner, and it is proactively engaging in value chains of Japaneseenterprises, he added.

A total of 38.02billion USD of foreign direct investment (FDI) had been poured into Vietnam asof December 20, 2019, a 10-year high, according to the Foreign InvestmentAgency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The amount,representing a 7.2 percent increase on a yearly basis, included newlyregistered capital, additional capital to existing projects, and share purchaseby foreign investors.

The Republic of Korea and Japan remained the largest investors of the nation.

Hanoi absorbed the lion’s share of the FDI flow with 8.45 billion USD or 22.2percent of the total figure. It was followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 8.3billion USD.

The disbursementof FDI capital also reached a record of 20.38 billion USD./.VNA