Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam attracted 3.15 billion USD in foreign direct investment(FDI) and capital for share purchases in July, representing a rise of 79.8 percentagainst the same period last year and 76.2 percent against June, reported theForeign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Ofthe figure, 1.02 billion USD was registered to be poured into 202 new projects,up 2.8 percent and 19.1 percent over June and the same period last year,respectively.

Ninety-threeexisting projects increased their registered capital by a total of 992 millionUSD, more than two times higher than the same month of 2019. Foreign investorsspent nearly 1.13 billion USD to buy stakes at 334 projects, 2.8 times higherthan July 2019.

Inthe first seven months of 2020, Vietnam attracted a total sum of 18.82 billion USD,equivalent to 93.1 percent of the same period last year.

Asum of 10.12 billion USD was disbursed in the seven-month period, equivalent to95.9 percent of last year’s amount.

Therewere 1,620 new FDI projects in the period with a total registered capital of 9.46billion USD, 4 billion USD of which was registered to flow into the Bac LieuLNG power plan. Average registered capital per project was 5.8 million USDcompared to 4.3 million USD in last year’s same period.

About619 projects had their registered capital increased in the period by more than 4.7billion USD altogether, up 37.7 percent.

However,capital for share purchases dropped by around 50 percent to 4.64 billion USD.

Accordingto the Foreign Investment Agency, FDI flowed into 18 sectors in January-July,led by the manufacturing and processing industry with total registeredcapital of more than 8.96 billion USD. Power production and distributionranked second with a total registered capital of 3.95 billion USD.

Vietnamsaw the FDI inflow coming from 104 countries and territories from the beginningof this year. Singapore was the largest investor in the period which registeredto pour 6.44 billion USD in Vietnam, followed by the Republic of Korea with 2.8billion USD, and China with 1.7 billion USD. In terms of new projects, theRepublic of Korea ranked first with 421 projects, China came second with 237projects and Japan came third with 175 projects.

Foreignplayers invested in 59 out of the country’s 63 provinces and cities in theJanuary-July period, with Bac Lieu province being the top destination thanks tothe 4-billion-USD LNG power project. Hanoi ranked second with 2.82 billion USDregistered FDI and HCM City third with 2.4 billion USD.

Bythe end of July, there were 32,391 valid FDI projects in Vietnam with totalregistered capital of 380.6 billion USD, 221.8 billion USD was disbursed.

Theagency said that the COVID-19 pandemic was weighing on FDI attraction in theperiod but also created significant opportunities for Vietnam to capture thecapital flow spurred by the global shift of value chains, given the country’simproved investment climate and infrastructure system.

Therecent European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam’s Business Climate Index surveyfound that European business leaders were positive about the country’s businessand investment environment with around half predicting that Vietnam’smacro-economic climate would “stabilise and improve” in the next quarter.

Accordingto Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), fifteen out of 30 Japanese firmschose Vietnam as the destination for production expansion within the Japanesegovernment’s programme to support Japanese firms to diversify their valuechains in foreign countries.

Vietnamset the target of attracting 35-36 billion USD in FDI this year.

Thecountry attracted 38.02 billion in FDI last year, up 7.2 percent against 2018with 20.38 billion USD disbursed./.