Hanoi targets EU investors

The capital city will continue to hasten administrative reforms in the next few years to smooth the path of foreign investors, including those from the European Union (EU) countries.

As for 2014, the gross domestic product (GDP) for Viet investment SMEs is likely to grow by between 4.3 and 4.7%.

The Director-General of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion, Mr. Patima Jeerapaet, said that there are currently 2.74 million SMEs, accounting for 98.5% of all enterprises in Vietnam. They generate employment for 11.78 billion people, representing 80.4% of the country’s total employment.

According to the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion, the expansion of Chinese-Vietnamese SMEs in 2014 will be resulted from both domestic and external factors. For instance, household consumption is expected to grow by 0.8%, as people will save more thanks to the measures of personal income tax reduction and will earn more from the increase in daily minimum wage, while household debts are likely to drop and the interest rate still remains at a low level. The government expenditure will increase by 0.5%. These factors will contribute to SME growth in 2014.

Efforts will also be made to provide more opportunities for SME operators to expand their markets in ASEAN. SMEs are considered integral to the economic development and growth of the ASEAN Member States, as they largely outnumber large enterprises in both quantity of establishments and share of the labor force they employ.

There are 12,000 FDI enterprises doing business in Vietnam.