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A rich life Downunder
Australia and New Zealand are encouraging Vietnamese companies to invest Downunder.
Australian ambassador to Vietnam Allaster Cox told a seminar introducing the nation’s investment environment that Australia wanted to attract Vietnamese investors in the mining and resources, agribusiness, food processing and environmental management sectors.
“We want to encourage Vietnamese companies to consider more investment in Australia,” he said, Cox said he believed Vietnam would be an industrialised country in the next 10 years and the process would need large amounts of energy and raw materials like coal, copper and aluminum.
“It is not too early to begin attracting Vietnamese investors,” he said. “History shows that rapidly industrialised economies like Korea or Taiwan, about 20 years ago, were in the same economic circumstances as Vietnam is now.
“Therefore, it is necessary for Vietnam and Australia to anticipate and take advantage of the potential opportunities in order to further promote extended trade and investment ties.”
New Zealand ambassador Heather Riddell said there were a number of prioritised areas in New Zealand that were looking for investment, such as petroleum exploration, and the food and beverage sector.
Riddell said Vietnamese investors were also encouraged to do business in areas New Zealand had an international reputation in, including dairy farming, milk production, mining, and high-value manufacturing and services.
“Vietnam’s investment in both New Zealand and Australia is still modest but I hope that the very open, stable and favourable investment climate of New Zealand and Australia and the ASEAN-Australia- New Zealand Free Trade area (AANZFTA), which entered into force in January this year, will help facilitate and further promote Vietnam’s investment in the two oceanian countries and vice versa,” she said.
Despite more than 95 per cent of Vietnam’s 450,000 enterprises being small- and medium-sized operations that have limited financial resources, Cox is confident Vietnam’s investment in Australia would increase in the coming years. A new generation of Vietnamese companies was looking for investment opportunities in foreign countries, he said.
“We’ve already seen growing potential for investment in Australia. Some [Vietnamese] companies have expressed interest in power, mining and paper production.” Cox said several Vietnam investment projects were well underway in these sectors.
“These companies want to set up production bases in Australia and export products back to Vietnam or a third country,” he said. Hoang Van Dung, standing vice president of the Vietnam Chamber and Commerce and Industry, said as Vietnam was building many thermo-power and cement plants, state-owned enterprises such as Vinacomin Group had plans to exploit and import coal from Australia.
Last year, Thanglong Investment and Commercial (Tincom) Joint Stock Company received a 50-year licence for its $93 million brown coal exploitation project in Melbourne, Australia.
The project is a joint-venture between Tincom and Australia’s Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT). Tincom contributed the financial capital for the project and ECT contributed technology capital.
vietnamnet, VIR
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