Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh is committed to further improving Vietnam's investment climate to attract more foreign investors and facilitate their operations in the country at the US-Vietnam Business Summit 2024 in Hanoi on November 27.
Vietnam will further improve its investment climate towards greater stability, openness, transparency, and alignment with international practices, while actively preparing conditions to support foreign investors, including US enterprises, said Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
To that goal, Vietnam will continue to address institutional bottlenecks, reduce compliance costs, and enhance digital, physical, and soft infrastructure, including transportation systems, to facilitate production and boost the competitiveness of goods. In addition, it aims to prioritize the development of a high-quality workforce through targeted training programmes.
Furthermore, the country will prioritize growth as a decisive factor, by revitalizing traditional growth drivers such as investment, consumption, and exports while promoting new growth drivers, with a primary focus on key sectors such as the digital economy, green economy, and circular economy, science and technology, innovation, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain.
The PM made the commitment and outlined major development orientations at the US-Vietnam business summit 2024 held in Hanoi on November 2024 by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi (AmCham), and the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
He pointed to the fact that the relations between Vietnam and the US have developed strongly over the years, especially after the two countries upgraded their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2023. He also thanked US businesses for their support and investments in Vietnam despite global complex developments.
Acknowledging the country’s status as a developing economy with a modest economic scale, high openness, and limited resilience to external shocks, he emphasized that Vietnam may not immediately address all challenges, but work out a clear roadmap with appropriate steps.
The PM urged the US to remove certain barriers and to recognize Vietnam’s market economy status soon, to pave the way for enhanced cooperation between the two countries and their business communities. He encouraged businesses from both countries to deepen their integration into new supply chains, helping to expand global supply chains in Vietnam.
He called on US businesses to focus on developing larger-scale projects with significant transformative impacts to create breakthroughs in bilateral investment cooperation. These include establishing international financial centers, building the North-South high-speed railway, constructing nuclear power plants, expanding airport and seaport systems, implementing clean energy projects, and creating large-scale national data centers.
The PM also stressed the importance of investments in finance, technology transfer, human resource training, and management expertise sharing to strengthen Vietnam’s growth and innovation capabilities. He particularly highlighted the country’s strategic focus on effectively utilizing three new domains to drive development, namely space exploration, maritime space and subterranean development.
He expressed his belief that businesses from both countries would have the capability to unlock the boundless potential for cooperation, thereby driving the Vietnam-US Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with fresh thinking, new visions, and dynamic momentum.
Speaking virtually from the US, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized Vietnam’s growing importance in the region, identifying the enhancement of the Vietnam-US Comprehensive Strategic Partnership as one of the US’ top priorities.
He highlighted the dynamic and robust cooperation between the two economies, including their business partnerships, bringing mutual benefits to their citizens.
Vietnam is playing an increasingly significant role and is becoming a key partner for the US government. Over the past decade, bilateral trade turnover has quadrupled, and both nations have worked together to introduce initiatives that benefit their communities, remarked Blinken.
President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Pham Tan Cong expressed his desire for both governments to promote and maintain stable trade relations toward the goal of achieving a balanced, sustainable, and mutually beneficial trade.
The VCCI leader recommended that businesses from both countries continue to strengthen cooperation, expand partnerships, share information, and jointly explore the development of cooperation projects, particularly in areas such as high technology, digital technology, circular economy, and green energy.
At the conference, business representatives from Vietnam and the US discussed policies and directions that both governments and the private sector need to implement to ensure mutually beneficial trade and investment relations between the two countries.
As of October 2024, the US had approximately 1,400 active FDI projects in Vietnam, with a total registered capital of nearly US$12 billion, ranking 11th out of 148 countries and territories investing in the country. The US is currently Vietnam’s second largest trading partner, with two-way trade hitting US$110.8 billion in 2023 and US$110.9 billion in the first 10 months of 2024.