Local firms keen to make strong investments in Laos
Hong Ngoc
By Hong Ngoc - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – HCMC Show, an exhibition of investment, trade and tourism from Monday to this Friday, and a market survey for Vietnamese enterprises to set up distribution systems in Champasak Province in Laos signify local firms’ interest in the neighboring country.
The trade event is being organized by the HCMC Investment and Trade Promotion Center to help local enterprises further penetrate the neighboring market, where many Vietnamese companies have come knocking.
Champasak, a large province in Laos’ southwest, is over 650 kilometers from Vientiane and has a population of some 700,000 people. With a strategic economic location in the East-West Corridor bordered by Thailand and Cambodia, the province is considered a gateway connecting Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
With 415 Vietnamese-invested projects totaling US$5 billion licensed as of now, Laos is considered the top destination for Vietnamese investors, said Tran Bac Ha, chairman of the Vietnamese Investors Association in Laos.
Bilateral trade posted a pickup of 22% year-on-year to over US$900 million in 2012, and the figure is expected to hit the US$2-billion mark in 2015.
Vietnamese companies have developed about 50 projects in southern Laos, including Champasak, with total capital of around US$2.2 billion, representing nearly half of the country’s total investment in Laos. Up to now, capital disbursement by Vietnamese enterprises in southern Laos has totaled roughly US$600 million.
The latest Vietnamese-invested project commissioned is the sugar and sugarcane industrial complex Hoang Anh Attapeu, which was opened on February 25 this year. Doan Nguyen Duc, chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group (HAGL), said his firm had grown over 5,000 hectares of sugarcane in Attapeu and that the rest would be developed by Laotian farmers. The sugarcane farming areas totaling up to 12,000 hectares will provide materials for the sugar plant with a daily crushing capacity of 7,000 tons of sugarcane.
Besides, HAGL has already constructed a thermo-power plant with a designed capacity of 30 MW connected to the national power network of Laos.
The total investment on this complex is US$87.8 million, with US$68.7 million for the thermo-power plant and the sugar factory and US$19.1 million for the material region.
Similarly, Tin Nghia Corporation, a local firm in the southern province of Dong Nai, has also entered the Laotian market from the very beginning. The enterprise since 2007 has invested in agriculture, industrial parks and tourism in Champasak, including two coffee farms.
Đăng ký: VietNam News
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