'In the early days people came here thinking it would be easy to make big money, but that was not the case because Vietnam was adapting to a whole new economic situation,' Mr Lo added.

'It was a lot more difficult in the past, but now the authorities are very much easier to deal with.

'There's much more flexibility and openness and that's why I will be staying on,' Mr Lo said.

'It's a good time to be here.

'Competition is not as stiff as it was and there is potential for better profits from trading and business generally.

'The Vietnamese are hard working and skilled, and despite complaints about high salaries they are not really that bad.

'But it's going to be five years before things really get going - potential investors must take the long-term view and need real back-up and support from their parent companies if they are serious about capitalising on what remains a potentially very lucrative market,' he said.

As general director of the Sun Wah-Fimexco group, Mr Lo is perhaps one of the most experienced foreign businessmen in Vietnam.

His first association with the country came in 1970 when he set up his own business which exported seafood from Vietnam to Hong Kong and beyond.

The business prospered and Mr Lo met a local who became his wife and mother of their two daughters.

But with the communist victory in 1975, Mr Lo was soon forced to leave Vietnam and return to Hong Kong where he joined the Sun Wah group in 1979.

When Vietnam opened up its economy 10 years later, Mr Lo's local experience and the fact he speaks fluent Vietnamese made him the logical choice to head up the company's new representative office which opened in 1990.

Since then Sun Wah-Fimexco has built up an impressive operation involving seafood export and serviced property centred on the US$46 million Sun Wah Tower, a joint venture with the Ho Chi Minh People's Committee on Nguyen Hue St.

However, according to Mr Lo, business in the commercial property sector could be better.

'It's the story of Vietnam in the early 1990s,' he said. 'Everyone rushed in expecting to make big profits and now we have a glut of commercial property - as much as 50 per cent is unoccupied.

'In 1995 grade A office space was demanding $50 to $60 per square metre a month. Now it's just $16 per month which is about half for similar space in Bangkok and at least three times cheaper than Hong Kong,' he said.

But Mr Lo said he believed the market had now bottomed out and predicted leasing costs would climb by between 20 and 25 per cent within the next year.

'Of course, it's difficult to predict because it depends on the regional economy as well as how things go here in Vietnam,' he said.

'But we would be happy with $20 to $22 per square metre a month in 12 months,' he said.

The regional crisis has also taken its toll on Hong Kong investment in Vietnam.

Two-way trade slumped 17 per cent last year and the SAR has fallen from third to fifth on the foreign investment table since 1997.

Hong Kong business interests now have 191 projects worth an estimated $3.1 billion in Vietnam but, according to Mr Lo, now could be the right time for investors to begin a re-examination of the country as a potentially profitable proposition.

'It's probably a good time for investors to start looking at coming back, in order to be well placed in about 18 months when it's predicted that the country's economy will stabilise,' he said.

Assisting that cause, Hong Kong business has a good central repository of local knowledge in the recently established HKBA to assist in gathering the intelligence it needs to make well informed investment decisions.

Mr Lo said the association - set up in July after six years of negotiations with Vietnamese authorities - now had 80 members from the 350 Hong Kong people resident in Vietnam.

'The association works very closely with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council to spread business intelligence about Vietnam in Hong Kong,' he said.

'It's a good forum for the exchange of ideas and information and we organise regular seminars on policy issues and the economic environment,' he said.

It is a good mechanism to unite Hong Kong business in Vietnam, membership costs just $150 a year and that buys you access to a lot of information.