VietNamNet Bridge – More and more wealthy Vietnamese businesspeople have been looking for investment opportunities overseas, but the results have been less than satisfactory.

In late 2014, ThaiVietjet officially joined the world’s aviation market. This is a joint venture between Thai Kan Air which contributed 51 percent of capital, and Vietjet Air, a “rising star” in Vietnam, which holds a 49 percent stake.

Also, in late 2014, Vietnamese local newspapers ran stories about a $1.8 billion project in Myanmar to which Viettel, the Vietnamese military telco, contributed $800 million.

Viettel, one of the three largest telecom groups in the country, aims to conquer overseas markets as part of its business strategy.

Prior to that, Viettel officially launched Bitel, a mobile network in Peru, in October 2014, following successful projects in Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Mozambique, East Timor and Cameroon.

In 2014 alone, Viettel made several major outward investment deals. These included a telecom network project in Tanzania, worth $355.2 million, and a telecom network project in Burundi, capitalized at $170 million.

FPT, the largest Vietnamese information technology group, finalized a big deal in 2014 after successfully acquiring RWE IT Slovakia.

Sources said that FPT might have to spend big money to be able to win the deal, in which its rival was a power company, one of the top-three Indian IT firms.

A report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment showed that in 2014 alone, Vietnamese registered 108 new outward investment projects with the Vietnamese registering invested capital of over $1 billion.

They also registered an investment capital increase of $564 million for 14 operational projects.

As such, Vietnamese spent over $1.6 billion in 2014 to develop projects in 28 countries and territories, a high figure if noting that the national economy was in recession.

To date, total Vietnamese outward investment capital has reached $19 billion.

Profits still low

While the news about the huge capital Vietnamese investors have poured into outward projects appears regularly in local newspapers and official reports, the news about profits comes in dribs and drabs.

Viettel, the military company, reportedly earned $1 billion in 2013, and estimates revenue of $1.2 billion in 2014 from overseas markets. There is no information about the 2014 profit, but the profit was modest, $150 million, the year before.

Meanwhile, FPT reportedly had turnover of VND3.216 trillion, or $152 million, in the first 11 months of the year from its global activities, and a pretax profit of VND527 billion.

The Head of the Foreign Investment Agency, Do Nhat Hoang, noted that Vietnamese investors are just in the very early investment stage and therefore cannot expect profits immediately.

K. Chi