Where does it end up?
So where does all that US$ 8.75 billion end up? For this question, the anecdotal reporting has the most precise answers. As we know well from the grapevine, actual OV investment dollars end up in:
- Geography: Concentration in South
- Scale: Mostly small businesses
- Sector: Focus on speculative real estate development, labor-intensive manufacturing, or back-office IT outsourcing
- Business model: simple, cash-based businesses that offer tangible product or service
Some of it ends up with large, venture capital-backed enterprises like Highland Coffee or Glass Egg Digital Media or IDG Ventures or VinaCapital Group. However, the relatively new existence and economic disposition of the Vietnamese-American community (poorer, but more likely to be self-employed than the US national average) means that we do not generate the same proportion of investment that immigrants from Taiwan, Korea, China, or India can send home. However, I did compile some data on where overall FDI is going—a handful of very large real estate, resort construction, manufacturing, and resource extraction (oil, mining) projects.
incredible report. thank you for sharing.
Thank you for an interesting report. It would be interesting to get data–if it exists–of overseas Vietnamese remittances from 1975 onward, and compare the figures over several periods.