HANOI, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam had attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of nearly 15.8 billion U.S. dollars as of Sept. 20 this year, witnessing a year-on-year decline of 19.9 percent, according to the country's General Statistics Office on Monday.
Specifically, Vietnam licensed 2,759 new FDI projects with total registered capital of roughly 11 billion U.S. dollars, down 22.3 percent on-year in capital and saw 1,037 operational FDI projects raise their capital by nearly 4.8 billion U.S. dollars, down 13.6 percent.
Roughly 12.4 billion U.S. dollars or 78.6 percent of the total FDI were poured into the processing and manufacturing sector, while another 1.1 billion U.S. dollars or 6.7 percent came to the real estate sector, according to the office.
Between January and September, South Korea was Vietnam's largest source of new FDI with nearly 2.1 billion U.S. dollars, followed by China with over 2 billion U.S. dollars and Japan with approximately 1.6 billion U.S. dollars.
In the same period, foreign investors also spent 10.4 billion U.S. dollars buying shares or contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, surging 82.3 percent on-year.
