According to Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency, Vietnamese firms’ outbound investment rose steadily on-year in recent years.

Vietnam has 600 on-going outbound investment projects worth more than $10 billion in total committed capital and over $2 billion in disbursed capital, VNexpress reported.

Amid a turbulent economy, several local firms are hunting new markets for untapped potential.

In September 10, 2011 private group Hoang Anh Gia Lai inked memorandum of understandings (MoUs) for four big projects with the Laotian government. The group carved its name among the most successful investors in this neighbouring market with around $1 billion in total investment channeling into rubber, sugar, mining and hydropower industries.

Also in Laos, private Air Mekong owner BIM Group just broke the ground of its $70 million Vientiane Complex, a five-star hotel, shopping mall and office-for-lease building development which is slated to get into life in late 2012.

Besides Hoang Anh Gia Lai and BIM Group, military-run telecom Viettel Group is an efficient foreign investor in Laos.

After less than two years going online, Unitel - a joint venture between Viettel and Lao Asia Telecom - has grown into Laos’ number one mobile services provider in terms of both subscribers and network infrastructure.

Statistics show that from 1993 through to August 2011, Vietnam operated over 420 projects worth $3.57 billion in Laos. Vietnamese investments’ largest recipients were Vientiane capital with around $1.9 billion, Xekong province $350 million and Champaxac province $248 million.

From October 2010 to September 2011 alone, Vietnamese firms poured 246 million committed into 50 projects in this neighbouring country.

Nearby Laos, Cambodia also captures a large share of Vietnam’s outbound investment.

Telecom giant FPT got a foothold in Cambodia three years ago. In the next step, the telecom giant planned to buy out local service providers and act directly in this market, according to FPT executives.

Before FPT, Viettel was the most successful telecom investor in Cambodia with a top position in mobile services’ infrastructure and customer share under Metfone brand.

Cambodian information technology indexes saw a turnaround more than a year after Metfone’s birth. The mobile service density grew from 15 per cent in February 2009 to 40 per cent in October 2010. In the same period, Metfone grabbed the number one position in subscriber number and won the year’s most promising services provider award in the Asia-Pacific region.

Parallel to the jump into neighbouring markets, both FPT and Viettel are promoting information telecommunications services in distant markets of Africa and America.

Lately, FPT and Nigeria’s 21^st Century inked a MoU on strategic cooperation in telecommunications, education and equipment manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Viettel was honoured with a licence to operate telecom services in Mozambique, another African country. The group just launched a mobile service network in Haiti, an American country which was hardly hit by a horrendous earthquake taking 300,000 lives more than a year ago.

At the launching, Natcom (a joint venture between Viettel and Haitian government) became the largest service provider with nearly 1,000 base transceiver stations, 30 per cent higher than what the largest service provider before that time Digicel did in six years.

“Difficulties entail opportunities and we strive to make use of this. Not many investors wanted to jump into Haiti after the earthquake. Our investment commitment was greatly supported by Haitian people and government which led to our miraculous growth today,” said Viettel deputy general director Nguyen Manh Hung.