Public investment projects reject Vietnamese products, brush laws aside Many bidding documents require tenderers to provide import products, even if the products can be made domestically.    Vietnamese mechanical engineering enterprises complain that they don’t have opportunities to become contractors of the package deals funded by the state budget because the investors only accept imported products. Huynh Dac Thang, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Planning Department, said investors require products sourced from G7 countries, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, for their business, or similar products imported under the mode of complete built units (CBU).This eliminates Vietnamese manufacturers from offering a  tender. Meanwhile, the investors of state-funded package deals are required to give priority to domestically made products as stipulated in the Prime Minister’s Instruction No 494 dated in 2010. Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon quoted Tran Thanh Trong, general director of Sang Ban Mai JSC, which runs a power generator factory in Binh Duong province, as saying that most investors of state-funded projects preferred using foreign made products. Trong said the requirement on similar equipment or products from G7 countries was set by the investors in nearly 95 percent of state-funded projects. In many cases, the investors accepted products made in China, because they are also the imports, while rejecting Vietnamese  products, even though Vietnamese manufacturers can show their products satisfy the requirements. Vietnam has many times suffered from bad decisions to use low-quality Chinese technologies and equipment, from blast furnace cement to thermal power and sugar refinery technologies. Thang said MOIT has asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment to amend Instruction No 494 to fix the loopholes that investors can exploit to reject domestic products in state-funded investment projects. Thang said bidding documents must not specify the origin of goods and must not ask for similar products. This would give more opportunities to domestic enterprises to tender state-funded projects and help stimulate domestic production. Dr. Nguyen Huy Quy, former head of the Institute for Chinese Studies, noted that Vietnam bought outdated Chinese technologies because the products were cheap. However, he warned that the low-technologies will harm Vietnam’s industry modernization in the long run. Quy noted that many investors still buy Chinese technologies and production lines not because they are unaware of the problems of the technologies, but because of embezzlement. According to the General Department of Customs, Vietnam imported $3.72 billion worth of machines, equipment and accessories from China, up by 29.4 percent over the same period of the last year. China continues to be the largest supplier of equipment for Vietnam. Dat Viet