ONLINE CONFERENCE “VIETNAM – KOREA INVESTMENT CONNECTION”

On November 10, 2021, the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Ministry of Industry and Trade) coordinated with the Asia-Africa Market Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade), Korea Trade - Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), Vietnam Trade Office in Korea, Department of Industry and Trade of Thai Binh province; Tourism, Commerce,  Investment Promotion Center of Kien Giang Province and Investment, Trade and Tourism Promotion Center in Nghe An province organized the Webinar: "Vietnam - Korea Investment Connection" within the framework of the operation of the Korea Desk. The webinar attracted nearly 100 Korean business representatives to attend online.

Participants attending online from Nghe An province.
Speaking at the opening remark of the webinar, Mr. Vu Ba Phu - Director of VIETRADE (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that since the 4th wave of COVID-19 broke out in mid-2021, the Korean business community in Vietnam has been working closely and effectively in accompanying with Vietnam to "safely adapt" to the pandemic. Besides, currently, many decisions from the National Assembly and the Government have been promptly issued recently to remove difficulties for businesses; in which Resolution No. 128/NQ-CP dated 11/10/2021 on temporarily "safely adapting, flexibly, effectively controlling the Covid-19 pandemic" is playing an important role in the process of opening step by step, safely, steadily, but firstly is to recover most of the manufacturing activities back to normal. “Despite the rapid and complicated developments of the pandemic, VIETRADE (Ministry of Industry and Trade) as a state management agency in the field of trade, investment promotion and industry development has been working hard to create and deploy new trade and investment promotion solutions based on information technology application to helpVietnamese enterprises and industrial parks to maintain regularly and continuously connect with potential foreign partners and investors to find out investment opportunities in the context of the complicated developments of the Covid-19 pandemic," said Mr. Vu. Ba Phu at the Webinar.
At the online 1-1 meeting session, thanks to close coordination between the Trade Promotion Agency and KOTRA, total of 49 trading sessions between Korean enterprises and Vietnamese industrial parks (IPs) were held. Participating industrial parks highly appreciate that the Organizing Board has arranged separate online trading rooms to help IPs to save time and cost in accessing and promoting their IPs to Korean investors. In which, some IPs have found potential investors who expressed their desire to promote investment into IPs.

Pictures at the the online 1-1 meeting session between Korean enterprises and Vietnamese IPs

Promoting Korean investment in Vietnam’s Provinces
Thai Binh is a coastal delta province, located in the North of Vietnam and Southeast of the Red River Delta. Until October 2021, Thai Binh Province has 97 FDI projects, in which there are 24 projects of Korean investors with a total registered investment capital of 83.02 million USD. Main investment fields are textiles, there is 1 auto parts assembly project and 1 project LED lamp assembly project.

With Thai Binh: "Good pandemic prevention, ensuring a safe and effective production and business environment, early and adequate access to vaccines are the core conditions to attract FDI at this time." – sharing by Mr. Tran Huy Quan - Director of Thai Binh Department of Industry and Trade at the Webinar.
Currently Thai Binh is prioritizing on: attracting enterprises to invest in large-scale, high-value-added industrial projects to produce eco-friendly products and participate in the global value chain; encouraging the development of e-commerce, domestic trade, building production-distribution linkage chains; investing in large-scale modern tourism infrastructure projects (Development project of Con Vanh, Con Den eco-tourism areas...).
Nghe An is one of the provinces of Vietnam that always focuses on cooperation with the provinces and localities of South Korea. In 2005, Nghe An province established Friendship Relations with Gyeonggi province (Korea); In November 2005, Vinh City and Nam-yang-ju City, Gyeong-gi Province (Korea) established friendly relationship with each other in terms of economy, culture, education, youth, etc.
In the coming years, Nghe An has an orientation to attract investment in 3 main sectors: industry sector such as Automobile , light metals, textiles, building materials; consumer such as food and beverage processing, civil electricity, household appliances, high-tech agriculture and logistics such as inland port, modern logistics services, warehousing system. “Nghe An hopes that in the near future, we will receive more attention and be an attractive and safe investment destination for Korean businesses.” – speech by Mr. Nguyen Van Nam - Deputy Director of Nghe An Investment, Trade and Tourism Promotion Center.

Representatives of Nghe An and Kien Giang provinces spoke at the webinar.
Kien Giang is located on the Southwest of Vietnam (one of four key economic provinces of the Mekong Delta). In the coming time, Kien Giang province will continue to give priority to attracting investment in 5 key areas of socio-economic development: high-tech agricultural development; renewable and clean energy development, tourism, trade & services - education & training - medical service and marine economy development.
Especially for the Korean investors, Kien Giang wishes to attract Korean enterprises with sufficient resources (technology, capital, management capacity, investment experience, etc.) to invest in various fields such as: agricultural and fisheries processing, leather shoe production; clean agriculture, high valued agricultural product processing, investing in technical infrastructure in industrial zone and clusters and recycled energy, waste and waste water treatment, etc. Sharing at the webinar, Ms. Nguyen Duy Linh Thao - Director of the Investment, Trade and Tourism Promotion Center of Kien Giang province expressed: “We look forward to getting access to modern technologies to reduce environmental impacts. We think that Korean investors in particular will have more advantages than domestic investors in term of this.”

Investment trends of Korean FDI in Vietnam

In the first half of 2021, Vietnam's economy recover quickly, economic growth rate is about 5.64%. Late April 2021, Covid-19 broke out again in Vietnam which made the country went through quite a difficult period. As a result, the growth rate during this period decreased to -6.17%. Mr. Kyung Don Kim - Head of Investment Promotion Team of Korea Trade - Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in Hanoi commented that: "Vietnam is the most affected country by Covid-19. The outbreak of Covid-19 in Vietnam in 2020 led to a rather low growth rate, although the first half of 2021 showed a fairly good recovery, after the 3rd quarter, it reached negative growth again.

Mr. Kyung Don Kim - Head of Investment Promotion - Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in Hanoi - spoke at the webinar.
The Covid-19 pandemic broke out in Vietnam from 28th April 2021, since then foreign partners as well as Korean enterprises investing in Vietnam also faced many difficulties. Many factories had to suspend operations due to limited transport among localities, many cases were detected in industrial zones. However, now that the pandemic situation in Vietnam is gradually being under control, factories and industrial parks returned to operation, and transport among localities has also been easier. Moreover, there are no major problems in the production activities of the enterprise.
Currently, bilateral trade between Vietnam and Korea is reaching the highest level ever. For Vietnam, Korea is the third largest export destination and second largest import destination after the United States and China. Total trade turnover between the two countries as of the 2nd quarter of 2021 reached about 67.5 billion USD. Based on current trends, bilateral trade between 2 countries is expected to reach $70 billion by the end of this year. Although the Covid-19 situation is still complicated, it can be seen that the trade turnover between Vietnam and South Korea is increasing significantly.
Korea is still the largest investor in Vietnam with a total of 9,165 projects. Some main areas that Korean investors are interested in are manufacturing and producing. About 79% of Korean enterprises are investing in the manufacturing industry such as Samsung, LG, Hyundai Motors, etc. In recent years, investing in specialized chemical technology, information communication and retails has also increased significantly. 

Renewal of Memorandum of Understanding between VIETRADE and KOTRA

VIETRADE - MoIT, the Trade Promotion Agency of Vietnam, has set up the KOREA DESK within VIETRADE with KOTRA (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency) following the MOU which was signed between two governments in Seoul, Korea, on the 27th of November, 2019 in the presence of both countries’ national leaders. 
On the 1st of August 2020, KOREA DESK officially went into operation. The purpose of KOREA DESK is to support Korean enterprises’ investment and trading activities in Vietnam by addressing difficulties faced by Korean investors, facilitating their investments and assisting the promotion activities of Vietnamese central and regional government.
During more than 1 year of operation, KOREA DESK has organized many different programs and solutions such as: policy dialogue on mobile components sector in 2020, Online webinar "Vietnam-Korea Investment Connection" in 2020 and 2021, policy dialogue on autoparts sector in 2021, training and consulting programs in regional provinces to connect, consult and promote direct investment from Korea to Vietnam effectively. All activities have received large participation from Korean investors, representatives of localities and industrial parks in Vietnam and are highly appreciated. KOREA DESK plays an important role and is an effective and substantial investment promotion channel. With the positive results in activities, VIETRADE and KOTRA have officially continued to extend the commitments in the Memorandum of Understanding for another 3 years and KOREA DESK will continue to accompany provinces, industrial parks and business communities of the two countries in the connection of investment and trade to become more effective, practical and direct with specialized and in-depth thematic consultation network.


Vietnam maps showing administrative units, sources of critical raw materials and industrial zones locations.