(VOVworld) – Vietnam has targeted by 2020, the value of its high-tech products and high-tech product applications will account for 40% of the country’s industrial production value contributing to turning Vietnam into an industrialized nation. To realize this, the country’s high-tech parks play a key role in shifting the economic growth model into a more effective and sustainable direction. VOV’s reporter To Tuan gives you an insight into this process.

Ms. Le Bich Loan – Vice President in charge of investment attraction, international cooperation and enterprise activities of SHTP, delivered a report on the park’s activities over the last decade.

Being one of Vietnam’s first three hi-tech parks and having the highest growth rate in the country, Saigon Hi-Tech Park, SHTP, has been considered a reliable destination in high-tech investment. It has attracted many world leading high-tech corporations including US’ Intel with a chipset manufacturing and assembly plant, Jabil with an electronic component manufacturing plant, Japan’s Nidec with a step motor plant, and Italy’s Datalogic with a bar code reader manufacturing plant. Set up in 2002, 29 of the 66 licensed projects have gone into operation, accumulating production value of 3.5 billion USD, generating jobs for about 17,000 workers in the city. This park has made a significant contribution to the City’s economic restructuring. Le Thanh Hai is Ho Chi Minh City’s Party Committee’s Secretary ‘The municipal leaders should concentrate on investing in development research for the parks’ second phase. More policies should be outlined to encourage and entice high-tech human resources, including overseas Vietnamese and foreign scientists engaged in research, development and training with SHTP, and form companies to capitalise on research results.’

Hoa Lac High - Tech Park

Established in 1998, after 15 years of operations, Hoa La High - Tech Park, located west of Hanoi, has become a platform for the country’s science and technology. Its infrastructure has been being completed and scheduled to be completed by 2015 using Japan’s ODA that is divided into two phases. At present, it is home to 61 projects worth more than 1.5 billion USD including those from local tech giants such as Viettel, FPT and VNPT. Some projects have become operational such as Nissan Techno Vietnam, an electronic accessories plant of Noble Vietnam, and FPT University.  In September, a ground-breaking ceremony for Vietnam’s first Space Center was held in the park with a total of ODA investment of 600 million USD for the first phase. Once it’s completed in 2020, the center will be the most modern one of its kind in Southeast Asia. Featuring hi-tech and software sectors, Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park is designed as a science city with high-tech and software zones next to training centers for high-tech human resource. Truong Gia Binh is President of FPT Group ‘Covering an area of 6.4 hectares in the park, we will build Vietnam‘s biggest center for software development. By 2015, we will move up to 13,000 students to this area, more than 225 ha will be used for high-tech industrial zone No1 and have an investment of 36 million USD. We hope that Hoa Lac High-tech park will be a center of science.’

On top of increasing investment in technical infrastructure for high-tech parks, the Vietnamese government has issued many incentives for these zones to attract investors in high-tech production. The highest goal of the government is to make high-tech parks a nucleus in shifting the country’s economic growth model.  

To Tuan