Dong Nai (VNA) – Dong Nai province, an industrial hub in the southernregion, is seeking measures to lure investment given a drop in FDI this year.

Director ofthe provincial Department of Planning and Investment Nguyen Huu Nguyenattributed the FDI reduction to bottlenecks in regulations stipulated by thelaws on investment and land as well as those on public assets.

Dong Nai isworking on its overall planning so that project licences have to wait forapproval, he added.

Whilepotential businesses cannot register their investments, local industrial parksare running out of land. As a result, a number of big foreign-funded projectsearmarked for Dong Nai have been moved to neighbouring localities.  

The provincetargets to attract 1 billion USD in foreign capital this year. The earlycompletion of its overall planning and addressing administrative barriers willplay a key role in meeting the goal.

ViceChairwoman of the provincial People's Committee Nguyen Thi Hoang said recently,local authorities joined a working session with industrial park infrastructurecompanies to learn about their difficulties and take timely measures to helpremove them.

Dong Nai isalso coordinating with ministries and branches to speed up the completion ofprocedures for setting up new industrial zones approved by the Prime Minister,which are expected to offer 7,000 more hectares of industrial land servingdomestic- and foreign-funded projects, she noted.

Since thestart of the year, many FDI corporations have come to the province looking forinvestment opportunities such as Aeon, De Heus and Pandora. Many of thosealready channeling capital into Dong Nai like Novaland, Hung Thinh, Dat Xanh,Sojitz, Canon, Shiseido and Mitsubishi said they will continue to expand theirinvestment.

Park HyunBae, chairman of the Korean Business Association in Dong Nai, assessed thatbusinesses from the Republic of Korea (RoK) are constantly pumping more moneyinto the province, particularly in industry and energy.

He said theinvestors, however, faced a lack of large industrial land for lease.

Parkrecommended the province quickly invest in the infrastructure of expanded andnew industrial parks to welcome the investment wave from the RoK.

In the first10 months of this year, RoK investors pumped nearly 187 million USD in nine newprojects at industrial parks in Dong Nai. Meanwhile, 26 RoK-funded projects inthe province added a total of 118 million USD to their investment capital.

As of thebeginning of November, Dong Nai was home to 426 RoK-invested projects worthmore than 7.2 billion USD./.