Vietnam investors eye top-five spot, $1.5bn investment in Myanmar by 2015
Vietnam investors eye top-five spot, $1.5bn investment in Myanmar by 2015
Vietnamese businesses have set a goal of becoming one of the five largest foreign investors in Myanmar by next year, chairman of the Association of Vietnamese Investors in Myanmar (AVIM) said Sunday in Hanoi.
Vietnamese investors in Myanmar have sought to increase their investment in the country to US$1.5 billion to achieve the target, AVIM chairman Tran Bac Ha said during a meeting with Speaker of the Assembly of the Union of Myanmar Thura U Shwe Mann, who is visiting Vietnam from September 5 to 9.
The AVIM also aims to hike bilateral trade to $650-700 billion, and send the Vietnamese tourist arrivals to Myanmar to 35,000 a year, Ha was quoted by the Vietnam News Agency as saying.
The association was founded in March 2010 under an initiative of the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV). Its chairman Tran Bac Ha is also the chairman of BIDV.
It currently has 76 members, many of which are major enterprises and corporations such as PetroVietnam, Vietnam Airlines, Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group, and Vietnam Rubber Group.
To achieve its target, the AVIM called on the Myanmar government and the Assembly of the Union of Myanmar to continue developing legal frameworks and perfecting mechanisms as well as incentive policies for foreign investors.
Myanmar should also have agreements on encouraging and protecting investment and issue regulations on the ownership of investment assets for Vietnamese firms in the country.
The AVIM chairman expressed his hope that Myanmar will accelerate the licensing process for Vietnamese projects in the fields of textile, agriculture, health care, energy, construction material production, finance, and banking.
In response, Mann said Myanmar is learning from other countries to improve its legal framework and simplify administrative formalities to lure more foreign investments.
The Myanmar parliament speaker said the AVIM should continue acting as a bridge to bring more Vietnamese investments to Myanmar, particularly in agriculture, hotel, tourism, finance, and banking.
Since its establishment, the AVIM has arranged for around 5,000 Vietnamese businesspeople to visit and conduct investment studies in Myanmar, according to the Vietnam News Agency.
Fifty-six Vietnamese businesses have been licensed to operate in Myanmar, with seven major projects having a total registered capital of $600 million.
The biggest project is a complex of hotels, apartments and offices worth $440 million operated by Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group.
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