VietNamNet Bridge – Within the first 24 hours after the first shop in HCM City opened, McDonald’s received 22,500 customers, equal to one-tenth of the population in one district in the city.

The first McDonald’s shop served 22,500 customers within 24 hours of the opening

This shows the attractiveness of the Vietnamese market and explains why foreign investors have flocked to Vietnam.

Andy Ho from VinaCapital, an investment fund management company, said that if the sales of McDonald’s shops all over the globe in the first month of operation were compared, the shop in HCM City would rank second in the chain, just below Beijing, and above the third-ranked shop in Moscow.

Henry Nguyen, managing director of McDonald’s Vietnam, said at a press conference earlier this year that the first McDonald’s shop served 22,500 customers within 24 hours of the opening day, while the figure reached 400,000 in the first month.

The 2009 population census showed that 1.68 million people living in urban areas were aged 10 to 24, a potential market in which one in four people could be viewed as customers.

In District 1, the central area of HCM City, where the fast food brand set up its first shop, one of every 10 local residents visited the shop in the first month.

The sales of McDonald’s shows the strong growth of the Vietnamese market, Andy Ho said.

Investors consider the scale of the targeted markets before deciding whether to offer money.

Having been present in the last 20 years in Vietnam, Heinrich Hiesinger, managing director of ThyssenKrupp, said that Vietnam is a market with great potential for European investors thanks to its young population, high consumption demand and high economic growth rate.

The managing director said the group had decided to make long-term investments in Vietnam, though the businesses sometimes have not gone smoothly. The group now runs three factories in Vietnam which brings turnover of $150 million a year.

A branding expert noted that the young population is also one of the reasons that attract foreign retailers.

Other big groups eyeing Vietnam are Walmart, Central Group, Berli Jucker and 7-Eleven.

A survey conducted by Teikoku Databank found that Japanese companies were now more optimistic about Vietnam as an investment destination because of its low costs and young labor force.

The survey also found that Vietnam ranked fourth on the list of most attractive sale markets, following China, the US and Thailand.

A report from the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA), an arm of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), showed that though the registered foreign direct investment (FDI) capital in the first nine months of 2014 was lower than the figure for the same period last year, the number of licensed projects was higher.

The report showed that 1,152 projects received investment certificates this year, an increase of 32 percent over the same period of 2013.

Last year, the high level of promised investment capital was due to the presence of huge oil refinery and real estate projects. The number of licensed projects increased by 12 percent only.

VNE