A delegation of Japanese businesses operating in the infrastructure andfinancial-banking sectors visited the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho onApril 22 to eye investment opportunities there.

At a working session with provincial leading officials, Kohei Watanabe,head of the Japan-Mekong Business Cooperation Committee under the JapanChamber of Commerce and Industry, said that investing in Can Tho is partof Japan’s investment promotion programme in the Mekong Delta region.

Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le HungDung said he expects the visit will open up new cooperationopportunities between Japanese businesses and the locality.

Can Tho is implementing a lot of preferential policies to attract moreinvestment to the prioritised fields of farm produce and aquaticproduct processing, healthcare, education, machinery assemblage andtransport infrastructure, he added.

At the workingsession, municipal representatives called for investment to sixprojects, for which foreigners will be exempted from paying corporateincome tax for two years and only 50 percent for the three followingyears.

According to the Can Tho Investment, Tradeand Tourism Promotion Centre, there are now 13 Japanese enterprisesdoing business in the city, mostly in automobile manufacturing, sportsequipment and electronics.

Last year, Can Tho earned155 million USD from exporting garments and agricultural products toJapan, while spending 29.5 million USD on buying goods from the country.-VNA