Hanoi, March 19:

For the second time in a decade, investors are flocking to Vietnam attracted by rave reports about its hard-working, literate and low cost workforce and the country’s dynamic economic growth.

Ten years ago the hype soon fizzled as many foreign companies found out the hard way that Asia’s latest ‘tiger’ had yet to change its command economy stripes, even before the buzz was dea-lt a fatal blow by the 1997 Asian crisis. This time around there is talk of a ‘mini-China,’ an emerging investment alternative to the northern giant, with a government that is speeding up reforms in a bid to join the World Trade Organisation this year. “Ten years ago there were companies circling Vietnam,” Virginia Foote, president of the US-Vietnam Trade Council, said in Hanoi.

“Some of them stayed, many of them went on. I think there is a little bit of that sense now with investment capital, there is a lot of it,” she said A lot has happened since the 1990s, when Vietnam opened up to the world. The US lifted its embargo in 1994 and the former enemies sig-ned a trade pact in 2000, triggering a surge of Vietnamese exports.

The ec-onomy has grown at aro-und seven per cent annually in recent years and foreign direct investment per capita was larger than China’s last year.