Viet Nam hosted the World Economic Forum on ASEAN 2018 (WEF ASEAN) between 11 and 13 September in Ha Noi.

Chairman Tho (front row, 2nd right) attending the meeting between Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong as part of numerous activities at WEF ASEAN 2018

Themed ‘ASEAN 4.0: Entrepreneurship and the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, this year’s event attracted more than 1,000 representatives from World Economic Forum members and businesses, along with over 300 reporters, from both home and abroad.

A group of representatives from the Da Nang authorities, led by its Chairman Huynh Duc Tho, participated in the event.

WEF ASEAN 2018 is seen as the golden opportunity for Da Nang to advertise its strengths and potential to the world’s leading partners and businesses, as well as introduce them to the city’s transparent and fair investment attraction policies.

During the 3-day event, the Da Nang leaders had a total of over 10 bilateral working sessions with representatives from large corporations and enterprises worldwide such as Visa, Schneider Electric, Emotiv, Mitsubishi, Hitachi Asia, Cisco, Nokia, Ericsson, Philips Electronics and Ship and Freight UAE. The city’s working sessions about such aspects as hi-tech, information technology and telecommunication, electronics-automation, logistics, healthcare, and finance, attracted a great deal of attention from foreign investors.

In particular, the Cisco System and Nokia corporations showed their keen interest in the development of the city’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector and its smart urban model in the coming time.

Meanwhile, Mr Olivier Oullier, President of the EMOTIV company which is a global leader in mobile neuroinformatics, learned about the city’s infrastructure, human resources, IT industrial parks, and preferential policies for investors.

During his meeting with municipal People’s Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh, Mr Tommy Leong, the Zone President of East Asia and Japan for Schneider Electric cum a member of the Board of Directors of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, remarked that Viet Nam was one of the most dynamic emerging countries in East Asia region, and was one of the markets where the company had the highest growth.

He added after learning about the potential and advantages of Da Nang, he would encourage his partners to learn about the city’s investment climate. In the long-term future, his company would expand its production activities into the city.

Mr Leong also took the opportunity to ask for the permission from the Da Nang leaders to participate in the smarter city and solar energy projects in the locality.

In reply, Vice Chairman Minh highly praised the Schneider Electric for its good ideas for some of his city’s projects. He asked the company to contribute its opinions about the smarter city project, and to give its advices for the city’s solar energy project, with a focus on inner-city areas.

Whilst working with the Da Nang delegation, Mr Denis Brunetti, General Director of the Ericsson Viet Nam company cum EuroCham Co-Chairman, suggested that the seaside city should accelerate the implementation of the smart city project, and the construction progress of the hi-tech and dedicated IT parks in order to facilitate his company, and other investors, to effectively operate in the city.

Mr Denis Brunetti also stressed the necessity to attract even more qualified human resources from foreign countries to live and work in the city.

As for the logistics aspect, Mr Toby Edwards, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ship and Freight UAE Company, said his company is planning to open its representative office in Da Nang in order to give active support to businesses in the city and neighbouring localities.

To date, Da Nang has attracted a total of over 632 FDI projects from 43 countries and territories worldwide, worth more than 3.16 billion USD.

These projects have actively helped to shift the city’s economic structure more towards services, industry and agriculture, promote the city’s economic growth, and created jobs for over 53,000 people.

Therefore, the municipal authorities are giving top priority to attracting even more domestic and foreign investment into the city in a bid to promote the local socio-economic development in the years ahead.