U.S. investors are now present in almost all industries in Vietnam and have so far pumped more than US$11 billion into the Southeast Asian country, the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) said.

American businesses are participating in 17 out of 21 industries in Vietnam, with most of their investment channeled into hospitality, the agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment said in a report released Tuesday.

As of March 20, there were 735 active U.S.-invested projects, with a total registered capital of around $11.06 billion, in Vietnam, according to the report. This ranks the U.S. seventh out of 101 countries and territories that have had operations and production in the Southeast Asian country so far.

Seventeen of these projects are in hospitality, with a total registered capital of $4.68 billion, or 42.3 percent of the total figure, according to the FIA.

The manufacturing and processing industries take the lead in terms of the number of projects, 323. These projects are worth $2.24 billion collectively, accounting for 20.3 percent of the U.S. total investment in Vietnam.

The largest U.S.-invested project in the country to date is that of Winvest Investment (Vietnam) Co. Ltd., which was licensed in 2006 to develop a $4.1 billion resort-hotel-entertainment complex in the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, according to the report.

Ba Ria-Vung Tau is also where U.S. investors are running the biggest projects among 42 Vietnamese provinces and cities where American businesses are present. The province, some 100km from Ho Chi Minh City, is now home to 18 projects, collectively worth $5.3 billion, nearly half of the total figure.

The northern city of Hai Phong and southern Binh Duong Province come second and third, with $1.2 billion and $780.6 million in registered capital, respectively.

Most of the American projects in Vietnam, or 599 to be exact, are 100 percent U.S. invested, whereas 111 others are in the joint venture form. These two kinds of investment have a total registered capital of nearly $8.27 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively.

The average scale of an American project in Vietnam is $15 million, higher than the average of the foreign-invested sector of $14.3 million, according to the FIA.

In the first quarter of this year alone, the U.S. had eight newly-registered projects and increased investment for two existing ones, with inflows in both cases aggregately estimated at nearly $70 million.

Thirty-three countries and territories invested in Vietnam in the three-month period, and the U.S. stood at the seventh place.

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