Workshop between Vinh Phuc and UK’s enterprises

The workshop was attended by Mr. Nguyen Van Thao – Vietnamese Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Paul Smith – Chairman of Harvey Nashtech, the representatives of Westminster Kingsway College and dozens of investors.

Addressing the opening of the workshop, Chairman Nguyen Van Tri welcomed UK’s enterprises being interested in attending the workshop. Upon introducing some general information about Vinh Phuc, the Chairman stressed some investment sectors where Vinh Phuc was calling for foreign direct investment, especially from UK’s enterprise.

Then, Mr. Nguyen Tien Hanh – Deputy Head of the Office of Provincial People’s Committee cum Director of Promotion and Investment Agency (IPA Vinh Phuc), provided more details to the enterprises on investment incentive policies of Vinh Phuc and on administrative procedure settlement under one stop shop mechanism and Enterprise – Government Dialogue Portal.

Speaking at the workshop, Ambassador Nguyen Van Thao welcomed and highly appreciated the dynamism of Vinh Phuc when it proactively approach to investment calling from foreign investors, especially from England.

The Ambassador also said that Vietnam and the UK had established a strategic cooperation relation in 2010. Since then, the cooperation had been developing rapidly. In 3 years, from 2012 to 2014, bilateral trade turnover increased threefold as compared to the previous period. In 2015, the growth rate reached over 30 and direct investment of UK into Vietnam increased by 35% compared to 2014. The Ambassador also stressed that Vietnam is an emerging market with annual average economic growth in the past 20 years reaching more than 6%. Calling foreign investment had currently being focused on by Vietnam, in which Vinh Phuc was a bright spot of investment attraction. Several major investors from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan had invested in Vinh Phuc and achieved success. It was the testament of Vinh Phuc’s attractiveness of investment environment. Ambassador Nguyen Van Thao compared Vinh Phuc with Manchester which was the first industrial city in the world with outstanding development in the Northern England.

Since the establishment of Asean Economic Community in 2015, the community consists of 10 members with a total population of over 600 million people which is more than the one of European Union and North America. This is an emerging market, attracting a lot of investors. Particularly, Vietnam also signed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), Free Trade Agreement with EU, many countries and regions around the world, creating several opportunities for investors and their trading partners to do business in Vietnam.

Thanks to the experience of cooperation with Britain for many years, the Ambassador recommended that the cooperation between Vinh Phuc and the UK should focus on three main areas: (1) high-tech industry (Currently, a lot of high-tech investors have been rushing to invest in Vietnam, typically as Samsung. In 2015, the total value of imported electronic components from Vietnam to the UK is 1.7 billion US dollars); (2) supporting industry; (3) human resource training.

In the discussion with Vinh Phuc delegation, the UK enterprises made many questions related to technology investment, the preferential policies of corporation income tax of Vinh Phuc, cooperation opportunities in the field of technical infrastructure design and construction. UK enterprises expected that Vinh Phuc should pay more attention to English language training and vocational training for labors. Ending the discussion, a number of UK enterprises said that they could plan to visit and learn more about investment climate and opportunities in Vinh Phuc.

The workshop with UK’s enterprises in London also ended the investment promotion mission of Vinh Phuc delegation in Europe in 2016.