With priority placed on projects with high technological content, supporting industries and high value-added services, particularly clean and environment-friendly projects, will be major changes in investment attraction in Da Nang City in a bid to match its goal of becoming a sustainable city. Vietnam Business Forum has an exclusive interview with Mr Tran Van Son, Director of Da Nang Department of Planning and Investment. Duy Anh reports.The economic crisis gave rise to a considerable reduction in investment attraction in recent years. How is investment attraction in Da Nang City?
Despite general economic slowdown in recent years, Da Nang City still achieved positive results in foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction from 2011 to 2014. From 2011 to November 15, 2014, the city drew 140 new FDI projects with US$622.49 million and allowed 129 existing projects to add US$562 million to their registered base, totalling US$1.184 billion. In 2014 alone, the city licensed 30 FDI projects with US$128.41 million. Particularly, it granted investment certificates to 29 FDI projects with US$33.17 million and allowed one project to separate from Vina Capital Group: Da Nang River Complex Trade Centre with US$95.24 million.
The effect of investment attraction relates to many industries and depends on many factors like market potential, labour quality and costs, infrastructure facilities and investment incentives. In recent years, the city attempted to strengthen and renovate investment promotion by introducing chosen locations outside industrial parks to help investors save time in making investment decisions, and expand cooperation with foreign partners to attract investors into target industries like aerospace, supporting industries, tourism, trade, logistics and healthcare.
In 2014, the city’s leaders met and worked with more than 40 potential investor delegations exploring the investment environment and opportunities in the city, including big firms like Airbus, Safran, KAI, Mitsubishi Industry and Apple. 12 investment promotion conferences were held by the city in Vietnam and foreign countries, targeting specific themes and partners.
Currently, the competition in investment attraction among localities is fiercer and fiercer. Could you please tell us what solutions Da Nang City has taken to catch the fancy of big projects?
To attract and manage investment in the context of the economic downturn and fiercer competition from other localities, Da Nang City has executed a lot of solutions as follows.
First, speeding up FDI attraction
The city has improved mechanisms and policies to call for investment capital; publicised construction and land-use planning for major projects; and introduced training policies to meet the demand of foreign investors.
The city has changed investment promotion methods and built investment promotion plans for specific fields; introduced specific investment promotion plans for every potential investor, especially multinational corporations (TNCs); improved the quality of investment promotion publications and documents in both content and form.
The city has sped up administrative procedure reform and applied single-window mechanism for investment procedures; actively supported investors before, during and after they receive investment licences and provided sufficient information for investors; and kept up two direct dialogues with investors a year to listen to their problems and introduce the best solutions.
Second, promoting and using ODA capital effectively
The city has sought measures to use ODA capital in the most effective manner; provided sufficient counterpart capital for ODA projects; and cleared construction sites for infrastructure construction projects.
To ensure environmentally sustainable economic development, the city is focusing on promoting important projects like Da Nang wastewater drainage and treatment project (funded by JICA), Lien Chieu port construction project (funded by JICA and ADB), and East-West Economic Corridor 2 construction project (funded by ADB).
Third, accessing new investment models
Due to economic slowdown, public investment was narrowed. To ensure social security, Da Nang City has implemented investment encouragement policies like adopting public – private partnership (PPP) investment form in public services (health, education, water supply, etc.).
Fourth, strengthening international cooperation and partnership with other cities in the world
The city has strengthened international investment cooperation with important countries and markets such as Japan, South Korea and JICA. Specifically, the city carried out the Tripartite Cooperation Program for Da Nang Sustainable Development by organising by the Da Nang Urban Development Forum under the support of Japan’s Yokohama City and JICA.
The city has promoted investment cooperation on East-West Economic Corridor, East-West Economic Corridor 2, and Mekong Subregion; uplifting Da Nang’s role as the eastern international gateway of East-West Economic Corridor and central coastal provinces.
Would you tell us about the overall investment attraction orientation of Da Nang City? What are the key industries and projects?
To ensure the tourism environment and sustainable development, the city advocated attracting projects using high-tech, supporting industries, high-valued services, especially environment-friendly projects. In the first quarter of 2014, Textile and Garment Group (Hong Kong) surveyed locations for its US$200 million textile, fabric factories in Da Nang City but the city turned down this project because it consisted of dyeing stages which were highly likely to pollute the environment. Similarly, in the second quarter of 2014, a Korean company was seeking over 30 ha for its textile dyeing complex but the authority introduced it to other provinces in the region. Earlier, the city also rejected two billion-dollar steel projects because of environmental issues.
The city is giving priority to luring FDI for high-tech, supporting industries, services, information technology, education, health, and logistics to enable it speed up its economic restructuring and turn Da Nang into an environment-friendly industrialised city.
Da Nang City has also contacted and attracted transnational corporations (TNCs), high-profile investors, finance-capable investors and investors with advanced technologies from Japan, South Korea, the United States, Singapore and Western Europe countries. At the same time, the city has actively supported existing investors to deal with their problems when they do business in the city as they may introduce new suitable investors to the city.
Đăng ký: VietNam News