Communist Vietnam has given permission for the country's first business consultancy firm aimed exclusively at the returning emigre community, its founder said Monday.
Established with an initial capital of around 400,000 dollars, the Overseas Vietnamese Business Club hopes to attract more than 200 clients in the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City, businessman Nguyen Ngoc My told AFP.
"The club will provide information related to investment in Vietnam, support overseas Vietnamese investors, and supply services for domestic businesses to set up representative offices and open trade exhibitions abroad.
"Because the government has no specific regulation for this kind of business, it took me years to get a licence to open the club."
Since the economic opening of the late 1980s, Vietnam's communist authorities have sought to mobilize the financial power of the huge emigre community.
Millions of ethnic Vietnamese live in Australia, France and the United States as a result of the massive post-war exodus of boat people.
But overseas Vietnamese still face discrimination through a two-tier pricing system and remain the subject of suspicion for anti-communist sympathies.
By the end of last year, overseas Vietnamese businessmen had invested in 533 projects worth a total of 250 million dollars, according to foreign ministry figures – HANOI (AFP)
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