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Telecom, IT businesses reap rewards from overseas investment
Only two Vietnamese telecom and information technology businesses have invested abroad so far but their ventures have proved to be fruitful.
The Vietnam Military Telecom Company (Viettel) was the first Vietnamese telecom services provider to reach out to the overseas market in 2006.
The company is now a leading provider of channel leasing services in Cambodia and holding a large market share in the VoIP market after a year entering the neibouring country.
Viettel General Director Nguyen Manh Hung said Viettel plans to provide mobile telecom service in Cambodia from October this year and increase its investment capital there from 28 million USD to 70 million USD in the coming time.
The company will expand its mobile phone service network in Laos and open a representative office in Myanmar .
The second daring business in this field is FPT Software, a subsidiary of the Financing and Promoting Technology Corporation (FPT).
The software company has established five branches in Singapore , Japan , France , the US and Malaysia .
FPT Software’s branches in Japan and Singapore alone generate 77 percent of revenues and 80 percent of total orders of the company after only a year of operation.
FPT Software General Director Nguyen Lam Phuong said that it plans to open another branch in Europe and expand its business network to northern European countries, including Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands within the next two years.
The Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Department said investment activities towards foreign countries are gaining momentum as more Vietnamese businesses have developed financial strengths and begun to look outside the border for expansion opportunities.
Vietnam has so far had 317 valid overseas projects with registered capital of 2.5 billion USD.
However, the FPT Software director said that the largest difficulty Vietnamese businesses face while investing abroad, especially in telecom, was building trademarks.
Meanwhile, the Viettel General Director said businesses needed State guarantee to get loans from Vietnamese banks operating at invested countries.
VNA
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