Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has encouraged Japanese businesses to become strategic partners of Vietnam’s State-owned enterprises (SOEs), especially in industrial infrastructure construction. 

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the conference

Addressing the Vietnam-Japan investment promotion conference in Tokyo on October 10, the leader explained that Vietnam is stepping up the equitisation of State-owned enterprises by selling stakes in major SOEs in transportation, aviation, food and foodstuff, agriculture, telecommunications, trade, tourism services and construction. 

Japanese firms, with financial strength, good business administration and extensive international markets, are welcomed as strategic partners, he said 

Besides, Vietnam also encourages foreign investors in startups, as the country is focusing on developing startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), he noted.  

Amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Vietnam is shifting its growth drivers towards sectors with high-added values and using state-of-the-art technologies and high-quality labourers, the PM said. 

Therefore, the country hopes for Japanese investments in infrastructure development, clean energy, processing, electronics, manufacturing, support industry, high-tech agriculture, logistics, aviation and high-end hotels, the leader noted. 

Affirming that Vietnam’s investment environment will be further improved, PM Phuc said Japanese investors are welcomed to the country for mutual long-term and sustainable development. 

He said in the face of global uncertainties, Vietnam has maintained political and social stability, and consolidated the macro economy, with growth rate of nearly 7 percent in the first nine months of this year. 

Besides, Vietnam has joined a total of 16 new-generation free trade agreements (FTAs), the PM said, highlighting the country’s advantages of geopolitics, geoeconomics, population as well as Internet and smart phone users. 

“The Vietnamese Government considers improving the business environment a regular task,” he said, pointing to positive assessments of Vietnam’s investment environment by international organisation such as the World Bank (WB), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Nikkei, as demonstrated by the country’s moving up their investment environment indexes. 

Phuc also noted that up to 70 percent of Japanese enterprises have plans to expand their operation in Vietnam based on such factors as rising revenues, expanding market and competitive labour costs. 

The PM stressed that Japan is the second biggest foreign investor in Vietnam with over 52 billion USD, and the fourth biggest trade partner with two-way trade exceeding 33 billion USD. 

In the first eight months of this year, Japan continued to take the lead with investment of 7 billion USD, making up 28.8 percent of the total FDI capital poured into the country. 

Japanese investments have helped lure FDI from other countries and increase competition between FDI inflows in Vietnam, he said. 

The PM expressed his hope that there will be more initiatives and proposals made at the conference, thus contributing to promoting economic and trade ties between the two countries.

At the conference, PM Phuc and officials from Vietnam and Japan witnessed the exchange of cooperation documents between the two countries’ ministries, agencies and businesses with total value almost reaching 10 billion USD. -VNA