Vietnam to issue restricted foreign investment list under WTO commitments

Vietnam will soon publicize a list of fields which either forbid or restrict foreign investment, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, maritime and advertisement, under its WTO commitments, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times reported Thursday.

The list, which is being translated from Vietnamese into English, is much likely to be issued in November, the newspaper quoted Pham Manh Dung, head of the Legal Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, as saying.

Under the list, foreign investment in around a dozen of fields, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, financial services, maritime, advertisement, and real estate business, will be restricted.

Specifically, foreign investors will be allowed to hold at most 49 percent of capital in maritime enterprises in Vietnam, and 51 percent of that in telecommunications backbone line operators, he said.

For some fields like oil and gas, and mining, whether they will be opened or closed to foreign investors depends on Vietnam's specific socio-economic development plans, he said.

Vietnam on May 12 concluded the bilateral negotiations on its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the United States, the last of 28 partners which required bilateral talks, paving the way for Vietnam to join the global trading club, hopefully late 2006, after 11 years of bilateral and multilateral negotiations.

Source: Xinhua