1 July

Vietnam attracted an estimated foreign investment of 15.27 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, down 2.6 percent year on year, according to the country's General Statistics Office on Thursday.

Particularly, Vietnam licensed 804 new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with total registered capital of 9.55 billion U.S. dollars, down 43.3 percent in quantity but up 13.2 percent in capital year on year.

Over the six months, the country also saw 460 operational FDI projects raise capital by 4.12 billion U.S. dollars in total, up 10.6 percent.

Between January and June, disbursed FDI capital totaled 9.24 billion U.S. dollars, up 6.8 percent on year, said the office, adding that 72 percent were for the processing and manufacturing sector.

Among countries and regions with newly licensed investment projects in Vietnam during the period, Singapore was the largest source of registered capital with over 4.7 billion U.S. dollars, followed by Japan with around 1.7 billion U.S. dollars and China's Hong Kong with 856.4 million U.S. dollars, said the office.

xinhua