EVALUATION OF THE INVESTMENT CLIMATE IN MEKONG DELTA: THE CASE OF CAN THO AND HAU GIANG

Abstract

Many countries in the world, especially developing ones, are striving to attract investment capital. This is also the top concern of People's Committees of provinces/ cities across Vietnam. Although many localities in Mekong Delta have endeavored to call for capital investment in recent years, results were not as expected. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical basis underlying the investment climate along with indicators used to evaluate it. Results indicated that the current managementmechanisms of localities are very good and the remaining weakness lies at socioeconomic factors. Therefore, to be competitive in attracting investment capital, the localities need to upgradebasic production factors under socio-economic ones. However, in order to efficiently promote the socio-economic factors, the localities should be active in management mechanisms through the establishment of flexible capital investment attraction policies. This is because the competitiveness should be based on a dynamic innovation policy which creates a differentiation among localities when comparative advantage is no longera steady pillar for a long-term strategy.