Domestic investors provided about US$235 million for 35 projects while their money for 19 existing projects added another $62 million.

FDI was about $136.3 million for 27 projects.

Hepza Authority deputy director Nguyen Tan Phuoc explained: "The FDI decrease resulted from the global financial crisis and the authority's new investment policy which discourages labour-intensive projects that do not utilise technology."

But domestic enterprises had taken advantage of the opportunity to expand their investment and improve existing projects.

About $2.1billion has been injected into export processing and industrial zones during the past five years.

Of this, domestic investment has totalled $1.32 billion.

Licences have been granted or implemented for almost 1,200 projects in the HCM City's export processing and industrial zones so far this year.

Domestic investors have financed 710 projects and FDI 447.- VNS