Despite US FDI into Vietnam topping US$11.4 billion there is still room for more investment with key obstacles yet to be resolved, Tuoi Tre is reporting. The article specifically mentions human resources and intellectual property protections as being inadequate–see comments below.
Mai Nguyen, president of the Association of Foreign Investment Enterprises, told the news outlet that intellectual property protections were a big issue for US firms. Note that, Vietnam is currently on the Office of the US Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report with the report labelling the IP protection in Vietnam ‘a serious challenge’.
Thanh Tu Vu, the deputy executive director of the US-ASEAN Business Council, also told Tuoi Tre that a lack of skilled human resources and training programs to develop those resources was also a problem. This is in line with a Reuters article two weeks ago that highlighted Vietnam’s engineer shortage, pointing out the country had about 5,000 to 6,000 chip engineers but was expected to need an additional 15,000 over the next five years.