The Thăng Long Hà Nội Industrial Zone. — VNA/VNS Photo Danh Lam

HÀ NỘI — The capital city plans to build more industrial zones and industrial clusters to attract foreign investment, said deputy chairman of the municipal People's Committee Nguyễn Mạnh Quyền. 

The city would focus on speeding up site clearance and perfecting the infrastructure system, Quyền said during a meeting with representatives of the Ministry of Planning and Investment to discuss solutions to further attract foreign investment into the capital late last week. 

Lê Quang Long, head of the Hà Nội Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority, said the city had 10 industrial parks which were home to foreign-invested projects from more than 20 countries and territories. But it could only attract additional capital from existing projects due to the shortage of available land in its industrial zones.

Nguyễn Ánh Dương, director of the committee's Hà Nội Investment Promotion Agency, said the city's promotion activities which provided some essential information on projects calling for investment failed to attract the interest of potential investors.

In addition, information technology application in these promotion activities had not been fully optimised, resulting in inefficient online promotion activities, Dương said.

To address this issue, Quyền said Hà Nội would direct relevant agencies to improve the quality of investment promotion activities. 

It would concentrate on urging investors to fully comply with the commitments made in their investment licences, Quyền said. 

He also asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment to strengthen information sharing and continue to provide support, working closely with the city to improve the effectiveness of attracting foreign investment to the capital.

Statistics from Hà Nội Department of Planning and Investment revealed that the city had to date attracted over US$69.84 billion worth of foreign investment, ranking second among localities nationwide. 

Real estate had been the sector attracting the lion share of capital with 63 per cent, followed by trading services with 9 per cent, and construction and science and technology with 5 per cent. 

The department said that foreign investment inflow into the city had seen a significant increase over the past four months of 2023 with $1.82 billion, representing a remarkable 260 per cent increase over the same period last year.

Numerous projects in sectors such as healthcare, education, electricity, processing, and manufacturing have either received new grants or witnessed an increase in capital, with investments of $1 million or more each.

The encouraging result amid the challenging context had helped the city rank first in terms of foreign investment attraction in the period, demonstrating the confidence of foreign investors in the city's investment climate, it said. 

Despite its success in foreign investment attraction, the city still encountered with several challenges, the department's deputy director Nguyễn Ngọc Tú said. 

Tú outlined lengthy investment preparation and project implementation procedures, a lack of synchronised technical infrastructure, limited land availability, and comparatively high land rents - 1.5 to 2 times the rates of neighbouring localities, as among difficulties. — VNS