South Korea Dominates FDI Flow into Vietnam

South Korea is leaving other countries and territories far behind in the race to invest in Vietnam.


  LG Displayed in May started to build a $1.5-billion plant in Hai Phong city. Photo: insidehook.com

South Korean enterprises won approval to invest nearly $5.6 billion in Vietnam in the year to September 20, accounting for 34% of total foreign direct investment pledges in the period, according to the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

FDI from South Korea is approximate to the combined amount of the next four largest investors in the Southeast Asian country, which are Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The largest foreign-invested projects in the nine-month period came from South Korea. Among them, LG Display in May started to build a $1.5-billion plant in Hai Phong city to produce OLED displays for mobile devices.

LG Innotek, another subsidiary of LG Group, has won approval for a $550-million camera module factory also in Hai Phong, helping this city keep its status of the most heavily invested locality so far this year.

Between January and September, foreign companies committed to pour $16.43 billion into Vietnam, down 4.2% against the same period of 2015. This is the first decline in total FDI pledges so far this year.

Manufacturing and processing continues to be the most appealing to foreign players when attracting $12.15 billion, accounting for 73.9% of total FDI commitments.

Meanwhile, actual FDI in the Southeast Asian country increased 12.4% year-on-year to $11.02 billion in the first nine months of this year.

Tuan Minh / BizLIVE