The Yen Phong Industrial Zone in Bac Ninh province, which attracts the lion's share of foreign investment in the first ten months of 2024. (Photo: VNA)

According to the report, foreign investment inflows into Vietnam in the period also saw a modest increase of 2% to approximately 27.26 billion USD.

Up to 2,743 new foreign-invested projects were licensed during the period, with a total registered capital of over 12.23 billion USD, up 1.5% in the number of projects, but down 3% in capital.

The FIA attributed the slight decline in capital to the fact that new investment projects were small in scale, with a few of them having capital from over 100 million USD to over 300 million USD. Meanwhile, in October of 2023 alone, there were three large-scale projects worth between 500 million USD and 1.5 billion USD.

At the same time, 1,151 operating projects were allowed to raise their levels of capital by nearly 8.35 billion USD, up 6% and 42%, respectively.

However, foreign investors' capital contributions and share purchases recorded a yearly decline of 30% to 3.68 billion USD, the report said.

From January to October, the manufacturing and processing sector attracted the lion's share of foreign investment with 17.1 billion USD, down 14% year-on-year, which is equivalent to 62.6% of the total.

Real estate came next with nearly 5.23 billion USD, nearly three times higher than last year's corresponding period or capturing 19.2% of the total. Electricity production and distribution ranked third with 1.12 billion USD, followed by wholesale and retail with nearly 1 billion USD.

Among 106 countries and territories investing in Vietnam, Singapore took the lead with over 7.79 billion USD, up 61% year-on-year and making up 28.6% of the total foreign investment pledged in the country.

Mainland China followed with over 3.61 billion USD, up 5.4% and accounting for 13.3% of the total. Other major foreign investors were mainland the Republic of Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. But China ranked first in terms of the number of projects over the 10-month period, accounting for 28.8% of the total.

The FIA said that foreign investment was still focused on ten provinces and cities, those with advantages in attracting foreign investment including good infrastructure, stable human resources, efforts to reform administrative procedures and effective investment promotion.

The ten were Bac Ninh, HCM City, Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Hanoi, Dong Nai, Bac Giang and Ninh Thuan, accounting for 80% of the country's total number of foreign-invested projects and 71% of registered capital.

Of them, Bac Ninh was the largest recipient with 4.7 billion USD or 17.2% of the total investment registered in the country in the period.

HCM City and Quang Ninh were the runners-up with 2.1 billion USD or 7.7% and 1.98 billion USD or 7.2%, respectively.

According to the agency, the ten-month export turnover of the foreign-funded sector, including crude oil, was estimated at over 242 billion USD, up 13 year-on-year, accounting for 72.1% of Vietnam’s total export revenue.

The sector recorded a trade surplus of nearly 42 billion USD, including crude oil, and over 40.8 billion USD without crude oil. This surplus helped offset the domestic sector's trade deficit of nearly 19.4 billion USD./.