HANOI, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has attracted foreign investment of 18.47 billion U.S. dollars so far this year, witnessing a year-on-year decline of 9.2 percent, according to Vietnam's Foreign Investment Agency on Wednesday.

Specifically, Vietnam licensed 1,723 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with total registered capital of 7.41 billion U.S. dollars, and saw 628 operational FDI projects raise their capital by 2.94 billion U.S. dollars, local daily newspaper VnEconomy cited the agency as reporting.

Between January and June, foreign investors also spent 8.12 billion U.S. dollars buying shares or contributing capital to Vietnamese firms, surging 98.1 percent on-year.

Among the foreign capital, 71.2 percent were poured into the processing and manufacturing sector, 7.2 percent into the real estate sector, and 5.7 percent into retail and wholesale sector, according to the agency.

In the first half of this year, China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was Vietnam's largest source of foreign investment with 5.3 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly 28.7 percent of total investment, followed by South Korea and the Chinese mainland with 2.73 billion U.S. dollars and 2.29 billion U.S. dollars, respectively.