On October 7th 2015, in Hanoi, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Mr. Nguyen Van Trung met the Hamamatsu mision led by the city’s Deputy Mayor, Mr. Hoshino Satoru.
Hamamatsu, located in Shizuoka prefecture of Japan, is among the 20 designated cities of Japan. The city has become a city designated by government ordinance since 2007, with an area of 1,558.04 km2, a 813,369 population and a US$28 billion GDP in 2013. Hamamatsu has strengths in supporting industries especially for automobiles, motorcicles, production of musical instruments and textile; It is also the home city of many world famous corporations including Suzuki, Yamaha, Honda and Roland.
This is the second mission of the Hamamatsu city government to Vietnam. The first mission, headed by the city Mayor Mr. Yasutomo Suzuki, was held in December last year, when an MOU on mutual economic exchange was signed between the Mayor and leader of the Ministry of Planning and Investment. Following the siging of the MOU, in July this year, the two sides jointly organized a Vietnam investment promotion seminar in Hamamatsu.
The city mission this time also included leaders from 7 enterprises operating in fields of construction, manufacturing, agriculture and food processing, trading etc. At the meeting, Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Trung expressed his high appreciation for the city’s economic development and strengths and asserted that MPI would support in creating the most favorable conditions to the city’s enterprises to do business in Vietnam. Vietnam and Hamamatsu have huge potentials in areas of supporting industries, automobiles, motorcycles and textiles. Japan is now the leading investor in Vietnam with over 2,700 on-going investment projects with total registered capital of $37.9 billion, ranking the second out of 105 countries and territories investing in Vietnam. Vietnam economy in 2014 and 2015 is growing stably and the government is accelerating the administrative reform that eliminate a large number of procedures that are hindering companies from doing business. Vietnam remains its policy in encouraging investment projects with high added value, high technologies, minor energy consumption and environmental friendly.
The Deputy Mayor informed that though Hamamatsu is the home to many world known multinational corporations, the city’s small and medium sized enterprises are also endeavoring in expanding their business activities overseas. For Japan, ASEAN and specifically Vietnam are of huge importance. Many companies of Japan and Hamamatsu when investing in ASEAN have chosen Vietnam as their production base for getting further into the ASEAN market. Currently, there are 30 companies from Hamamatsu investing in Vietnam.
At the Q&A session, Hamamatsu companies showed great interest in investment opportunities in areas of agriculture and food processing, regulations on environment protection, waste treatment, minerals export, urban planning and regulations on maintenance of residential buildings, planning of supporting industry and industry zones for supporting industry, government plans for upgrading and modernizing of transport infrastructure and the traffic signboard systems for roads and railways etc.