Ha Noi (VNA) – A May 1 article by Thailand's The Nation newspaper has portrayed Viet Nam as a rising regional investment market that is increasingly drawing greater numbers of Thai investors to its shores.

As early as Viet Nam embarked on large-scale economic reforms and opened its doors to foreign investment in 1988, Thai entrepreneurs were among the first foreigners that rushed in to capitalise on the country that is home to a potential 85 million consumers.

“There has never been a shortage of Thai businessmen descending on Vietnam to look for investment and trade potential,” the paper said, adding that most of them have converged on Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City, the two major growth centres of Viet Nam, in their search for business opportunities.

A reflection of how well the countries are cohabitating economically can be surmised by last years two-way trade turnover between Viet Nam and Thailand that rose to 3.7 billion USD in 2006 from 3.1 billion USD in 2005.

With a total investment of 1.5 billion USD of investment capital, Thailand now ranks second among ASEAN investors in Viet Nam.

The paper claims that Viet Nam is seen by many regional market observers as being on the cusp of attracting massive flows of capital into the country following political victories such as “the US's normalisation of trade with Viet Nam and the country's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which put it on the map for international investors”.

Many veteran Thai entrepreneurs operating in Viet Nam are now quietly concerned that due to the country’s fortified status as a “rising star” in Asia and consistently stable growth rates of 8 percent, the country will soon become a formidable competitor against Thailand for investments from abroad.

Viet Nam’s economy in 2005 expanded at the fastest pace in almost a decade at close to 8.4 percent in 2005 and experts have predicted the country to maintain close to that for the next three years at least. However Viet Nam’s gross domestic product could grow by more than 10 percent annually if inefficiencies in the economy are eliminated, said a World Bank official.

The paper, instead, affirmed that Vietnamese government leaders and bureaucrats are humble enough not to paint itself as Thailand's competitor.

“In public, the Vietnamese would rather talk about cooperation than competition,” it said.

Some other Thai businesses, however, said they believed major Thai corporations could do more to capitalise on the Vietnamese market, while voicing their need that the Thai government should play a more active role in supporting their investments overseas, especially in countries like Viet Nam, which is clearly breathing down Thailand's neck economically.- Enditem