Other changes include reduced costs for power, water and telephone installation, and ill-defined 'privileges' in the leasing of land and for foreign exporters employing a large local workforce or whose products contain domestically made components.

'[This] is a breakthrough for the one-price policy and one legal framework for all investors,' the Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, Nguyen Nhac, recently told the Tuoi Tre newspaper.

But many foreigners remain unconvinced of the government's fundamental commitment to a genuinely competitive market.

'I remain sceptical,' said one source with several years of business experience in Vietnam.

'We've heard promises before, but nothing seems to change. Pricing is one thing, but bureaucracy is the biggest problem and there's nothing to suggest that is going to change quickly.' Tony Foster, of international law firm Freshfields, agreed that Vietnam's unwieldy bureaucracy remained the biggest impediment to foreign investment.

'Decision 53 resolves several minor cost issues, but for foreign investment to really take off, the whole environment needs to change,' Mr Foster said.

'The Vietnamese Government has chosen to go at it's own pace and fundamental structural change may not happen for 10 years.' That position was articulated during a recent conference involving the government, donors and foreign business.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Manh Cam was asked how long it would be before the private sector would lead the economy. He replied that Vietnam always would be a multi-sector economy led by the state, said one source who attended the meeting.

'We read into that a very clear message there will always be significant state control,' he said.

Other sources complained of problems with access to and convertibility of foreign currency and that, despite pricing reforms, Hanoi still would control the labour market and that salaries for Vietnam staff remained high by regional standards.

Several said an attitude that foreigners should pay more than Vietnamese was deeply entrenched - for example foreigners still will be required to pay five times more than their local competitors for advertising in state-controlled media.

Those disputes were rarely resolved in the foreigner's favour, one source said.

Whether due to the regional economic crisis or to the argument that frustration has driven foreigners to take their business elsewhere, it is clear that the investor optimism of the early 1990s has waned.

The Asian Development Bank recently concluded that Vietnam would attract less than $500 million in new investment this year, down from $4.05 billion last year and the lowest figure for a decade.

That projection was ridiculed as overly pessimistic in April with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between British Petroleum, Norway's Statoil and the state-controlled PetroVietnam, involving a $1.8 billion plan to exploit off-shore gas reserves.

But the signing came only after four years of negotiation.

'Many investors have found that even after reaching in-principle agreements, they can't agree on the fundamentals such as the price of electricity,' said Timothy Reinold, managing partner of law firm Freehill, Hollingdale and Page, adding that the extent of the 'boom' of the early and mid-1990s had likely been overstated.

Official foreign investment figures include the contribution - mostly of land - by Vietnam joint-venture partners, a fact, according to Mr Foster, which may have inflated actual investment by as much as 30 per cent.

Mr Reinold said those figures had been further distorted by including projections into foreign investment figures.

His colleague Robert Reid said there were concerns foreign investment would falter further in the year ahead.