Viet Nam is one of the world’s last emerging markets worthwhile for foreign investors, said Hans Beil, CEO of Siemens Viet Nam.

"Viet Nam’s WTO accession is a big success," Beil told a Viet Nam News Agency reporter. It will bring about a lot of opportunities and challenges for Vietnamese companies.

However, Beil noted, much remained to be done by the Vietnamese Government to further improve its investment environment, especially in the area of legal reform.

Siemens’ future plans, he said, included expanding its range of investment into power, communications, automation, education, healthcare, and water and waste treatment.

"Viet Nam is an interesting business market that is endowed with many advantages over other countries," Beil said, noting the country’s political stability, developing infrastructure, and geographical location favourable to accessing other markets in the region, including Laos and Cambodia.

"That is the reason why we want to expand our business in Viet Nam," he said.

Beil said he believes Viet Nam would attract greater foreign investment inflows and the national economy would continue to grow stably at around 8 per cent per year after it joins the world largest trade body.

It is unlikely that the Vietnamese economy will see a growth bubble, which would be an indication of crisis. "The economy will grow more but I think the Government will try to cool it down so that the growth will be stable and reliable," Beil added.

German-based Siemens first began exploring the Viet Nam market in 1979, but its business activities took off 10 years later with the construction of the 140Mbit/s transmission link between Ha Noi, Da Nang and the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces.

The company plans to step up image promotion campaigns to show the Vietnamese market that Siemens is not just a company making mobile phones as the people used to think.

"You can see Siemens everywhere, not in the public eye but behind closed doors in numerous infrastructure projects in key areas of the economy such as telecommunications, power supply and transportation," Beil said.

Source: Vietnam News