Where investment goes jobs are bound to follow, and Vietnam - the target of US$63billion in foreign investment commitments made since the country opened its doors to offshore investors in 1987 - has become the hottest employment market in Asia.
With big Hong Kong investors prominent in the cross-border capital flows, local employers such as HSBC are on the lookout for staff in Vietnam, and further relaxations announced last month to rules regarding foreign investment by banks could lift demand for banking skills in the country further.
HSBC, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, and Standard Chartered, are among the foreign lenders reported to be poised to take up licences to set up wholly-owned operations in Vietnam. Already stakeholders in domestic banks, several foreign players are now said to be weighing their options under the policy change announced by the Vietnamese government last month to invest in their own operations too.
A decision on whether to grant the licences is expected from the central bank during the last quarter of this year and will be in line with undertakings made by Vietnam when it joined the World Trade Organisation in January. In terms of the commitments, it is obliged to fully open its banking sector to foreign competition by 2011 and remove existing caps on foreign stakeholdings in local lenders.
Vietnam has so far allowed four domestic banks to sell stakes to foreigners. Among them are HSBC, which owns a 15 per cent stake in Techcombank, and ANZ, which has a 10 per cent stake in Sacombank.
The latest available employment data for the country shows that jobs' demand was up 35 per cent in the first quarter of the year, driven chiefly by foreign investment flows, a rapidly expanding economy and the decision to approve Vietnam's accession to the WTO.