5,000 new firms in Vietnam

5,000 new firms in Vietnam

HANOI (DPA): Vietnam registered 5,000 new enterprises in the first five months of the year, officials and media said on Monday, as the communist leadership continued to talk up an economic turnaround.

Locals have committed 4 trillion dong (US$284 million) into the new businesses, with over half of that investment pouring into 2,035 new enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's economic hub.

A record 476 new enterprises were registered in the city in May alone, a 100 per cent increase over May 1999.

Officials attributed the increase to the Enterprise Law, effective January 1 2000, which eliminated licensing procedures - and therefore government discretion - and streamlined the registration of new businesses.

Most of the new firms are in industrial production and the agro-forestry and processing sectors, officials said.