HANOI, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam attracted 23.5 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first 10 months of this year, a year-on-year decrease of 19.4 percent, its General Statistics Office reported on Thursday.
Specifically, Vietnam licensed 2,100 new FDI projects with total registered capital of 11.7 billion U.S. dollars, and saw 907 operational FDI projects raise capital by 5.7 billion U.S. dollars in total.
Between January and October, foreign investors also spent 6.1 billion U.S. dollars buying shares and contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, down 43.5 percent year-on-year.
Of the 15.8 billion U.S. dollars of FDI disbursed, 71 percent were for the processing and manufacturing sector, 14.5 percent for the real estate, and 6.9 percent for the electricity, gas, hot water, steam and air-conditioner production and distribution.
Among the 74 countries and regions with licensed investment projects in Vietnam during the cited period, Singapore was the largest source of newly registered capital with nearly 5.4 billion U.S. dollars, followed by China with more than 1.3 billion U.S. dollars and South Korea with over 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, said the office. Enditem
