Vietnam will appeal for greater foreign investment in biotechnology, technical infrastructure, and farm produce processing between 2006 and 2010, local newspaper Investment reported Monday.

Under a national program on attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) in the five-year period drafted by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnam will strive to lure more FDI in its agriculture, especially in biotechnology to turn out more high-quality strains of plants and animals, foodstuff processing technologies, post-harvest preserving techniques, construction of agricultural facilities, and the field of processing agriculture, forestry and seafood products.

To attract more FDI in the agriculture, the country is expected to issue more preferential policies on assisting investment, and developing material zones, agricultural infrastructure, rural areas, human resources, markets, and capital market.

By early September, Vietnam had lured 1,095 FDI projects with total registered capital of 5.2 billion U.S. dollars specializing in agriculture, forestry and seafood, according to the ministry's statistics. There are 805 valid projects totaling 3.9 billion dollars with investors mainly coming from Thailand, China, the Netherlands, Singapore, France, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.

Now, 88 operational FDI projects specialize in breeding animals and producing animal feeds with average capital of 11 million dollars per project, and 420 other projects with total registered investment of 1.3 billion dollars in growing forests and processing wood.

Source: Xinhua