HCM CITY — With HCM City now discouraging investment in labour-intensive sectors and preferring technology-based industries, investment in its industrial parks and export processing zones decreased by 53.95 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year to US$354.77 million.

Foreign direct investment was worth $167.17, a fall of 67.4 per cent, according to the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza).

Hepza issued investment certificates for 14 FDI projects worth $46.96 million, a year-on-year fall of 88.9 per cent, while 23 existing projects invested an additional $120.79 million, an increase of 33.88 per cent.

Japan was the largest investor, accounting for 77.35 per cent of the investment, followed by Singapore (9.59 per cent), South Korea (7.64 per cent) and Hong Kong (2.22 per cent).

Most of the investments were in electronics (76.29 per cent) followed by food processing (5.73 per cent), high-end textiles (4 per cent), mechanical engineering (2 per cent), and plastic and rubber (1.26 per cent).   

Trần Công Khanh, head of the Hepza office, told a press briefing yesterday that this year Hepza encourages investment in high-tech and supporting industries as well as the four key industries of mechanical engineering, electronics and IT, chemicals, and food processing.

Investment by domestic enterprises fell 26.9 per cent to $187.05 million, with 50 new projects worth $146.04 million getting licences, an increase of 11.2 per cent.

Most of the new projects are in food processing, services, mechanical engineering, chemicals, plastics and construction materials.

Export by enterprises in the IPs and EPZs rose 6.76 per cent to $4.32 million.

Some 285,700 workers are employed in the IPs and EPZs, marginally up from last year.

There are more than 1,400 projects with total investment of $9.31 billion, including 564 foreign-owned projects worth $5.47 billion. —VNS