Over the last two months, Indian investors have organised events and field surveys across the country to look for opportunities.

A view of the 2022 Horasis India Meeting (Photo: VNA)

The Confederation of Indian Industries led a delegation of 15 leading companies to Vietnam on September 25-28 to participate in the India-Vietnam Business Forums held in the southern province of Binh Duong and Hanoi.

Indian investors are looking for local partners to enhance bilateral cooperation in various sectors, such as energy, electric vehicles, IT, petrochemicals, healthcare, water treatment, food and beverages, fertilisers, and food processing.

“We want to establish a joint venture with local partners to set up an integrated biotech laboratory, which can be used to manufacture biotech products for agriculture, veterinary products, and aquaculture products,” said Mekala Lakshmi Prasad, managing director of agri- and aquaculture group Sujay Biotech.

In late August, 25 automotive component manufacturers from India arrived in Vietnam to look for funding opportunities. The manufacturers are all members of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA), which has over 800 members and accounts for 85 per cent of component production revenue in India.

Yuvraj Kapuria, chairman of the ACMA Young Business Leaders’ Forum (YBLF), said, “Vietnam attracts many of the world’s leading groups in the automotive industry, including original equipment manufacturing facilities and tier-1 solar panel factories. The ACMA wants to cooperate with domestic automotive manufacturing vendors to exploit this potential. We accept all investment methods, including direct investment.”

These businesses will work with authorities, ministries, and associations in the automotive sector and meet first-tier vendors in Vietnam.

“India considers Vietnam an important pillar of its Act East policy, and the Indian business community appreciates the potential for comprehensive cooperation in sci-tech, energy, and education and training,” Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Rajkumar Ranjan Singh said at the Horasis India Meeting 2022 in Binh Duong on September 26.

The business community of the two countries has much room for cooperation. The Vietnam-India relationship has been upgraded from a bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and the countries are also implementing a 2021-2023 action programme, which aims to implement various agreements and discussions from official meetings.

Statistics from the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency showed that Indian investors poured money into 340 projects with the total investment capital of about $1 billion as of September 20. Calculating the capital placed through a third country, the figure is estimated at $1.9 billion.

This capital inflow is expected to make breakthroughs thanks to more billion-dollar projects in the pipeline. Adani Group will cooperate with Anh Phat Investment Construction and Trading JSC to develop Lien Chieu Port, among the group’s proposed investment projects in Vietnam with an expected value of $10 billion.

The port infrastructure will combine a harbour area, container yard, warehouse complex, piers, waterways, and a transport system. The project is expected to handle ships with a capacity of 100,000DWT and container ships of up to 8,000TEU, while the total cargo going through these harbours would be 3.5-5 million tonnes annually. Danang People’s Committee is letting investors look at the details of the projects.

Additionally, SMS Pharmaceuticals and Vietnam’s Dai An Group have plans to build a billion-dollar pharmaceutical park in the northern province of Hai Duong.