Republic of Korea (RoK) businesses have poured additional 6.72 billion USD into Vietnam, making the RoK the largest among 62 foreign investors in the Southeast Asian nation.

Workers at Samsung Electronic Vietnam Thai Nguyen.

With 702 new projects and 260 adjusted ones, RoK investment has made up 29.6 percent of the country’s total foreign direct investment (FDI), according to the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Samsung Display Vietnam, a subsidiary of the RoK’s Samsung Group, has added 3 billion USD to its screen production project in the Yen Phong 1 Industrial Park in the northern province of Bac Ninh. The project was licensed in 2014 with initial registered capital of 1 billion USD.

Other big names making significant contributions to the country’s socio-economic development include LG, Posco, Hyundai, and Lotte.

President of the Vietnam Association of FDI Enterprises Nguyen Mai said the RoK investors have created the impetus for economic growth in the northern economic region.

Samsung, for example, has employed more than 100,000 locals and contributed approximately 30 billion USD to the country’s export value, he added.

FIA Director Do Nhat Hoang underlined the increasing trend of RoK investment in Vietnam, saying it will be further buoyed by the Vietnam-RoK free trade agreement (FTA), which became effective recently.

According to the General Statistics Office, bilateral trade between Vietnam and the RoK has increased significantly over the past few decades, from 500 million USD in 1992 to 28.8 billion USD in 2014.

There are about 3,000 RoK enterprises operating in Vietnam, creating jobs for more than 400,000 locals.

According to statistics of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in Hanoi, quoted by the RoK news agency Yonhap, the RoK’s total investment in Vietnam had reached 44.9 billion USD by the end of 2015.

VNA