New foreign direct investment (FDI) commitments reflect continued confidence by foreign investors in Viet Nam’s outlook despite global uncertainties, noted the World Bank (WB).

In its report Viet Nam Macro Monitoring for September 2023, the WB held that both foreign direct investment (FDI) commitments and disbursement in Viet Nam remained robust, reaching US$20.2 billion and US$15.9 billion respectively during the first nine months of 2023.

According to the WB, these represent an increase of 31 percent and 3 percent compared with the same period of 2022. 

Viet Nam’s economy registered 5.3 percent year-on-year growth in the third quarter of 2023 compared with 4.1 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023, due to a gradual recovery of industrial production, reflecting improvement in exports. 

The service sector remained the main contributor to the growth (contributing 2.7 percentage points) in the third quarter of 2023. 

Although the growth of retail sales of goods is still about 50 percent of pre-COVID-19 period levels, services sales have remained resilient thanks to return of international tourists.

Contribution to GDP growth by industry accelerated to 1.9 percentage point in the third quarter, compared with 0.8 and -0.1 percentage point in the second quarter and the first quarter, respectively.

Exports and imports continued to contract by 1.2 percent and 5 percent, respectively, in the third quarter. However, the contractions are much shallower than in the previous two quarters, due to continuous improvement in monthly performance–including in exports of agriculture products, textile, electronics, smartphone, and construction materials.

Core inflation softened from 4.0 percent in August to 3.8 percent in September.

Public investment disbursement during this period increased by 45.3 percent year-on-year but still reached only 48 percent of the planned capital budget approved by the National Assembly for 2023.

Further improving the business environment and stepping up investment in human capital could help the country attract high-tech and high-value addition FDI and boost productivity in the long run, suggested the WB.

Socialist Republic of Viet Nam Government News