Vietnam says $15 billion foreign investment goal hard to meet
Vietnam says $15 billion foreign investment goal hard to meet
Vietnam said it may fail to achieve its goal of attracting at least $15 billion of committed foreign direct investment this year amid a faltering global recovery and a domestic growth slowdown.
“It will be very hard to meet the target,” said Do Nhat Hoang, head of the Foreign Investment Agency at the Ministry of Planning & Investment. “We are facing domestic economic difficulties, fueled by unfavorable developments in global markets that have negatively impacted foreign investment into Vietnam this year,” he told reporters in Hanoi today.
The Southeast Asian nation has been buffeted by a credit crunch after the central bank pushed up interest rates last year to fight the fastestinflation in Asia, and with some Vietnamese banks’ ability to lend constrained by a lack of capital. The economy expanded 4 percent in the first quarter of the year, the slowest pace since 2009.Disbursement of foreign investment may fall to $10 billion this year, lower than an earlier forecast of $11 billion, Hoang said. Vietnam aimed to attract $15 billion to $16 billion of pledged foreign investments in 2012, according to a Dec. 30 government statement.
bloomberg
