US firms see Vietnam investments skyrocket The increasing number of giant US companies pouring money into Vietnam recently is likely to make the country the leading investor in Vietnam in the near future, reported Dau tu online. Statistics from the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment show that as many as 742 projects worth over 11 billion USD run by US firms were being operated in Vietnam by the end of May this year. More projects will follow. The Intel Group, for example, intends to shift its production activities from Malaysia to Vietnam due to Vietnam’s low-cost human resources, as it further promotes its significant investment in the country. Half of Intel’s 1 billion USD chip manufacturing factory project in Vietnam has been developed, positively contributing to the country’s socio-economic development. Since the US removed its trade embargo against Vietnam in 1995, and after the two countries signed a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) in 2001 , a series of major American firms, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, IBM, Cargill, Microsoft, Citigroup, Chevron, Ford, GE, AES, and UPS have accessed the Vietnamese market. Both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have run factories in Vietnam since the mid 1990s and have come to dominate the local beverage market. In 2010, PepsiCo funnelled an additional 250 million USD into Vietnam, and two years later it repurchased San Miguel’s Dong Nai factory and opened a Bac Ninh province-based 70 million USD plant; the largest in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has made a total investment of 500 million USD in Vietnam. Last year, the firm inaugurated four new production facilities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Procter & Gamble Vietnam Ltd (P&G Vietnam), one of the first US companies to invest in Vietnam , started the construction of a Gillette plant worth 100 million USD in southern Binh Duong province at the end of March this year. According to Hatsunori Kiriyama, President of P&G in the Asian-Pacific region , this i s part of the long-term plan on building sustainable facilities to supply P&G products in Vietnamese and Asian markets . After 20 years of its operation in Vietnam, P&G’s current total investment in Vietnam now totals more than 300 million USD. Microsoft now owns a mobile phone production plant worth over 300 million USD in northern Bac Ninh province. Last year, the firm’s export value reached 2 billion USD and it plans to transfer its manufacturing plants from other countries to Vietnam, making the country its production place. The Vietnamese market is more and more attractive to foreign investors, especially those from the US, as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will officially comes into effect in the near future. Negotiations of other free trade agreements between Vietnam and its foreign partners also help increase the interest of US firms in the country. This is proven by the fact that an increasing number of US business delegations, who are members of the US-ASEAN business Council, have visited Vietnam to seek opportunities here. VNA