HANOI, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam had attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of over 18.3 billion U.S. dollars as of Oct. 20 this year, witnessing a year-on-year decline of 15.2 percent, the country's General Statistics Office announced on Tuesday.
Specifically, Vietnam licensed 3,094 new FDI projects with total registered capital of more than 12.8 billion U.S. dollars, down 14.6 percent on-year in capital and saw 1,145 operational FDI projects raise their capital by nearly 5.5 billion U.S. dollars, down 16.4 percent.
Roughly 13.9 billion U.S. dollars or 75.8 percent of total registered FDI were poured into the processing and manufacturing sector, while more than 1.2 billion U.S. dollars or 6.7 percent came to the real estate sector, according to the office.
Between January and October, South Korea was Vietnam's largest source of new FDI with nearly 2.8 billion U.S. dollars, followed by China with over 2.1 billion U.S. dollars and Singapore with more than 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.
In the same period, foreign investors also spent 10.8 billion U.S. dollars buying shares or contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, surging 70.5 percent on-year.
