Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chaired the Policy Dialogue Session on the afternoon of September 25, 2024. Photo: Organizing Committee

That was one of the contents raised at the Policy Dialogue Session held on the afternoon of September 25 within the framework of the Ho Chi Minh City Economic Forum 2024, chaired by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and leaders of central ministries and branches.

Assessing FDI resources, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that in national development, internal resources are fundamental, strategic, long-term, decisive, while external resources are important and breakthrough. FDI brings capital, technology, management, contributes to human resource training and markets.

In the current conditions of Vietnam, FDI resources are very important and breakthrough because internal resources are limited. Since the beginning of the year, global FDI has declined, but Vietnam has still attracted 21 billion USD of registered FDI capital and disbursed 14 billion USD, the highest ever, so our attraction is effective.

However, according to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, to attract FDI, first, the institutions must be open, removing obstacles and obstacles in investment procedures, reducing procedures, decentralizing and delegating more power to localities.

Second, the infrastructure must be convenient and smooth, currently Vietnam's logistics costs account for about 17-18% of GDP, and must be reduced to the level of developed countries, which is about 11-12% of GDP. To do so, infrastructure must be developed, which not only creates new development space, increases land value, but also reduces costs, and enhances the competitiveness of products and the economy.

Third, pay attention to meeting the demand for high-quality human resources for emerging industries such as semiconductors, hydrogen, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, etc.

At the Dialogue Session, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and leaders of many central ministries and branches discussed many "hot" issues related to policies to promote industrial transformation, attract FDI investment, circular economy, etc.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Tran Quoc Phuong said that, regarding attracting foreign direct investment, in the general direction of Resolution 50 of the Politburo in 2019, it is to attract large-scale projects, environmentally friendly projects, high-tech projects to improve the quality of foreign investment in Vietnam.

To implement those directions of the Central Party, the Government, and the Prime Minister have directed the development of action programs, specific mechanisms and policies. Currently, to attract foreign investment to Vietnam, it is necessary to ensure basic conditions for investors to look at and come to Vietnam.

In recent times, Vietnam has made many changes in adjusting, amending, supplementing, and perfecting regulations related to these three factors to attract investors and welcome changes in investment capital flows in the new context, including amending the Land Law to increase opportunities for investors to access land.

Currently, in order to maintain an attractive investment and business environment, the Prime Minister also directed the Ministry of Planning and Investment to urgently complete the Decree on investment support funds and the investment support fund's target is to attract investors in the fields of technology, new industries such as semiconductor chips, green hydrogen, etc. to support businesses that are feasible in expanding investment in Vietnam between current projects that the business is operating, expanding and investing in new projects that the business has implemented in Vietnam.

Regarding attracting FDI for high-tech investment projects, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Pham Duc Long said that recently the Government submitted to the National Assembly for approval the amended Telecommunications Law. In this Law, for the first time, Vietnam has included data center and cloud computing services in the Law for regulation and management, but mainly to build policies to promote development and attract investors for large and very large data centers.

According to Mr. Pham Duc Long, digital transformation really needs very large-scale data centers. Vietnamese enterprises have also proactively built them but still need many large foreign investors to participate.

On September 20, the Prime Minister signed and promulgated the Strategy on Vietnam's semiconductor industry. In this strategy, there are many preferential policies. However, these policies will be implemented by ministries and branches in the process of issuing guidelines, including many issues related to customs procedures and tax costs.

In addition, the Ministry of Information and Communications also submitted to the Government a Strategy for developing digital technology enterprises, which means that FDI enterprises bring technology but they also need digital technology enterprises to support and assist in forming an ecosystem, etc.