A Huyndai 30,000 tonne ship arrives at Phu My 1 Port in southern Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province. The province is urged to invest in seaports and logistics industry. — VNA/VNS Ha Thai

Deputy Director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), Nguyen Thi Tue Anh said this during a meeting with provincial authorities on the FDI attraction strategy in the province on Tuesday.

She also suggested to the province that they should develop other important sectors including steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, engineering and support industries as well as food processing, marine tourism and health-care services.

In recent years, the province has attracted approximately 300 foreign-invested projects with a total registered capital of nearly US$28 billion, the provincial People's Committee Vice Chairman Ho Van Nien said.

However, the projects mainly specialise in assembling or sub-contract products, he said. In the time to come, the province needed to draw up new FDI attraction strategy with focus on luring small and medium-sized enterprises, he added.

According to CIEM, foreign-invested enterprises have made an effective contribution to increasing the provincial GDP, fostering business development and creating more jobs for locals.

However, the province still depended too heavily on a few sectors that required a lot of investment, natural resource exploitation and fewer labourers. In addition, FDI attraction in the service sector has not yet been exploited drastically and co-ordination between domestic and foreign investors remained poor.

The institute blamed the province's unsatisfactory performance for its weak industry, low involvement of the private sector and high proportion of agricultural labour. It also blamed the large unskilled labour force, as well as cumbersome management and non-implementation of measures to attract investment. — VNS