VietNamNet Bridge – It’s unclear why many huge foreign invested projects
capitalized at multi billion dollars have not been updated in the state
management agencies.
The information about the EPC signing contract appeared on all big local
newspapers
In late January 2013, the involved parties of the Nghi Son petrochemical
refinery project completed necessary procedures to be kicked off. The procedures
included the EPC contract signing ceremony and the license to increase in the
investment capital by 2.8 billion dollars.
The information about the EPC signing contract appeared on all big local
newspapers. However, it was not updated in the Ministry of Planning and
Investment (MPI) report.
The information about the project only appeared in the February 2013 report of
the ministry. However, the report showed that the project had the investment
capital of $630 million, while the project’s investment capital was much higher
after it got the permission on the capital increase.
Finally, MPI has updated the new investment capital. However, the late updating
led to the misunderstanding that the foreign direct investment (FDI) increased
in the first quarter of the year.
Nghi Son project, which has been listed as the registered project in March,
together with the Samsung’s $2 billion project in Thai Nguyen province, were the
reason that has made the FDI registered capital in the first quarter soar to $6
billion, which means a sharp increase in comparison with the same period of the
last year.
The MPI’s Foreign Investment Agency then “forgot” to release the FDI
report for March 2013. Instead of the figures for March, FIA has only released
the report for the whole first quarter.
The report showed the 63.6 percent increase in the FDI capital registered in the
first quarter of 2013 over the first quarter of 2012, a figure which can show
the “great achievements” in attracting FDI. The noteworthy thing is that the
information about the great achievements was released just some days before the
conference reviewing the 25-year Foreign Investment Law takes place, slated for
March 27.
With the investment capital increase of Nghi Son project, Thanh Hoa has become
the leader in terms of attracting FDI in the first quarter of 2013. Meanwhile,
if the figure had been updated timely, the first position should have belonged
to Thanh Hoa in January 2013 already.
The story about Nghi Son has reminded people about the story about Ha Tinh
province. In late 2012, Nghe Tinh province ranked the 34th in the official
reports among the biggest FDI attractors, with $31.53 million worth of
registered projects.
And Ha Tinh has unexpectedly jumped to the second position after the latest
updated report with $2.148 billion worth of registered FDI projects. Of the
amount, more than $2 billion worth of capital was found as the added capital of
the Formosa steel complex in the Vung Ang economic zone.
When reporters contacted Formosa, they were explained that the capital increase
decision was made a long time ago, and the approval for the capital increase was
also made a long time ago already, which means that this was not “new news.”
However, since MPI forgot to update the project, no one knew about capital
increase before.
The Foreign Investment Agency has been criticized for the tardiness in updating figures. Meanwhile,
the agency explained that it does not have the power big enough to ask local
authorities and ministries to submit reports on schedule. As a result, it cannot
have necessary details to provide reports with the most updated information.
TBKTVN