The Southern Key Economic Zone is witnessing lucrative signs for a foreign direct investment (FDI) boom with a range of projects costing from tens of million to hundreds of million US dollars.
Recently, Ho Chi Minh City, one of the eight localities belonging to the Zone, licensed Saigon Premier Container Terminal Company (SPCT) to construct a US$249-million world-standard container port in the local Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park (IP), which is capable of handling 1.5 million TEUs, or 30 million tons, per year
Meanwhile, the Saigon Port and APM Terminals of Finland will joint hands to start the construction of a container port in the south of the city by the end of the year. The port is slated to be operational by mid 2009.
The municipal authorities on August 8 granted an investment license to a US$223 million project by the South Korean’s Kumho Asiana Plaza Saigon Ltd. Co, which is designed to build a complex of hotels, a conference centre, offices and apartments for rent, shops, and a recreation area.
The Kumho Asiana Group will also simultaneously kicked off an automobile tyre factory in Binh Duong province with an investment capital of US$300 million an annual capacity of 3.15 million tyres.
Domestic investors are also speeding up the pace of many projects, either with their own ones or those in the form of joint venture in other provinces in the Zone. The Vietnam Steel Corporation is also seeking to partner with India’s steel production group Essar for a US$500 million joint-venture to construct a factory with an annual capacity of two million tons of steel sheets in Phu My Industrial Park in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau
A joint venture between the Thanh Long Tourism and the Viet Thang Company will start a US$900 million deluxe tourist resort in the southern coastal Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, the largest domestic-funded tourism project so far in Vietnam early next year.
According to the government guidance issued early this year, the southern key economic region, including eight provinces including Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Long An, Tay Ninh, Tien Giang, Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Dong Nai, is targeted to reach GDP growth by 2010 up 2.5 times over the year 2000 and by 2020 2.3-2.5 times higher over 2010 figures.
The zone’s contribution to national GDP is set to reach 41 per cent in 2010 and 44 per cent in 2020.
The zone is also asked to bolster economic growth, which must be higher than the national average, take the nation’s lead in industrialization and modernization, and become the economic, financial and trading hub of the whole nation and Southeast Asia as well.
Vietnam Economic Times
Vietnamese
