Taiwan invested about US$400 million in Vietnam in the first quarter of this year, making it the third-largest source of foreign investment in that nation during the period, according to data from the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment.
The investments by Taiwanese businesses accounted for 9.6 percent of all foreign investment in Vietnam in the January-to-March period, behind only South Korea, which invested US$513.5 million and had a 12.7 percent share, and Singapore, which invested US$449.3 million and had an 11.1 percent share.
The Vietnamese government approved 473 proposals for new investment by foreign businesses totaling US$2.74 billion and 203 proposals by foreign businesses to expand investment worth US$1.29 billion in the first three months of this year.
The processing and manufacturing sectors drew US$2.98 billion in foreign investment in the three-month period, or 72.2 percent of the total.
The real-estate sector received investments of US$239.8 million, or 5.9 percent of the total.
Foreign capital is flowing into Vietnam because of the creation of the ASEAN economic community which has created a free-trade bloc in the region, economists said.
The Vietnamese government’s pursuit of free-trade deals, including its bid to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has also appealed to foreign investors, economists said.
However, economists are concerned over the nation’s bureaucratic approach to handling foreign investment projects and its poor basic infrastructure, saying that improvements made by the Vietnamese government in these areas have yet to meet the expectations and needs of foreign businesses.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS