The Nghi Son Oil Refinary project, with a total investment of US$9 billion, is slated to start production by mid-2017. — petrotimes.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Vietnam has witnessed a surge in newly registered and additional FDI in the first five months of this year. Totalling 8.51 billion USD, it was an increase of 8.9 percent over the same period last year.

The country licensed 398 FDI projects with newly-registered capital of more than 5 billion USD, and permitted 160 others to have additional capital of 3.42 billion USD, up 5.8 percent and 14 percent respectively from last year.

An estimated 4.58 billion USD from the FDI projects has been disbursed over the last five months, a 1.6 percent year-on-year increase, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment's Foreign Investment Agency.

The processing and manufacturing industries still top the list of 18 sectors that received foreign investment. They are seeing new and additional capital of 7.5 billion USD followed by the property, wholesale and retail sectors.

Among the projects given the go-ahead, authorities approved a plant that will be built by Samsung Electronics Vietnam to produce and assemble hi-tech electronic products with a total investment of 2 billion USD in Thai Nguyen.

Authorities allowed additional capital of 2.8 billion USD for Japan 's Nghi Son Oil Refinery Ltd. Co. project in Thanh Hoa province.

According to the Agency, among the 40 countries and territories that have invested in Vietnam, Japan ranked first with newly-registered and additional capital of 3.6 billion USD in the reviewed period, followed by Singapore with 2.3 billion USD and Russia with one billion USD.

Northern central Thanh Hoa province led other cities in FDI attraction with 2.8 billion USD in the aforementioned time. Northern Thai Nguyen came second with over 2 billion USD and central Binh Dinh province, third, with more than 1 billion USD. — VNA/VNS