Japanese investors were impressed by the changes in Vietnam's investment policies, but worried about power shortages and the chaos they saw on city roads, experts said at a seminar with enterprises from Japan's Aichi province on Tuesday.

Vietnam has clearly become a popular destination for Japanese investors. In the first 10 months of the year, Japanese investors invested in 70 projects with a total registered capital of $1.4 billion in Vietnam, said Nguyen Thi Bich Van, deputy head of the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Foreign Investment Agency.

Japan now ranks third among foreign investors after South Korea and Taiwan.

Currently, around 80 companies from Aichi province operate in Vietnam.

Many Japanese investors had achieved good business results in Vietnam and planned to widen their operations; however, they were worried that power shortages would continue next year and affect their production plans, delegates said.

"As a production company, we need to be informed in advance about power outages so that we can make reasonable production plans," said Kazuo Watanabe, chief representative of Okaya Co Ltd in Ho Chi Minh City.

"If Vietnam does not take measures to improve the current traffic situation, it will be hard for the country to develop in a sustainable manner", said Tetsuya Yanaida, senior manager of Toyota Financial Services Corporation's Sales Finance Group.

Le Minh Triet, representative of the HCM City Department of Transport, said the municipal government was trying several ways to deal with the problem including building metro routes and implementing many traffic infrastructure projects.

"The city will also restructure bus routes and maintain price subsidies for the public bus system to encourage more people to use public transportation, thereby reducing the use of individual means of transport," he said.

The city would also co-operate with relevant agencies to raise awareness among people about the need to comply with traffic rules, he added.

With all these measures, the traffic situation was expected to experience positive changes in the coming time, he said.

Regarding power supply, Nguyen Tan Loc, head of Electricity of Vietnam's Planning Department, said the volume of commercial electricity had increased two-fold in comparison with the GDP growth rate, but Viet Nam still lacked electricity to supply production.

To increase power supply, EVN would put into operation 16 turbines at eight power plants in the coming time with a total output of 2,953MW, and shorten maintenance time, he said.

It would also encourage effective use of power to effect significant savings that could help ease power shortages.

"I cannot predict next year's power shortage now, but we will inform firms in advance about power cuts so that they will not affect production too much," he said.

Source: VNS