HANOI, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of over 13.1 billion U.S. dollars so far this year, witnessing a year-on-year decline of 31.2 percent, the country's General Statistics Office announced on Thursday.

Photo: VCG

Specifically, Vietnam licensed 2,406 new FDI projects with total registered capital of more than 9.1 billion U.S. dollars, down 32.3 percent on-year in capital and saw 908 operational FDI projects raise their capital by nearly 4 billion U.S. dollars, down 28.6 percent.

Over 10.3 billion U.S. dollars or 78.9 percent of total registered FDI were poured into the processing and manufacturing sector, while 729 million U.S. dollars or 5.6 percent of the total came to the real estate sector, according to the office.

Between January and August, China was Vietnam's largest source of new FDI with nearly 1.9 billion U.S. dollars, followed by South Korea with over 1.7 billion U.S. dollars and Japan with roughly 1.2 billion U.S. dollars.

In the same period, foreign investors also spent more than 9.5 billion U.S. dollars buying shares or contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, surging 80 percent on-year.