HANOI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of over 7.4 billion U.S. dollars in the first four months of this year, witnessing a year-on-year rise of 28.6 percent, according to the country's Foreign Investment Agency on Friday.

Specifically, Vietnam licensed 1,082 foreign-invested projects with total registered capital of over 5.3 billion dollars, posting respective year-on-year increases of 22.5 percent and 50.4 percent, and saw 395 operational FDI projects raise their capital by more than 2.1 billion dollars, down 6 percent.

Among the fresh FDI of more than 5.3 billion dollars, 74.1 percent were poured into the processing and manufacturing sector, 9.9 percent into the real estate trading sector, and 16 percent into others.

Among 51 countries and regions having fresh FDI projects in Vietnam between January and April, China was the biggest investor with more than 1.3 billion dollars, accounting for 24.6 percent of the total registered capital, followed by Singapore with 699.7 million dollars, the agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment said, noting that Vietnam licensed 187 Chinese-invested projects in the period.

Also in the four-month period, foreign investors spent more than 7.1 billion dollars buying shares or contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, 3.2 times bigger than the same period last year.

Meanwhile, Vietnam had 44 new investment projects totaling 96 million dollars licensed abroad and saw nine of its operational projects increase capital by 53.5 million dollars, said the agency.