The southern province of Binh Duong will focus on attracting investment in hi-tech, less labour-intensive and environmentally friendly industries in the time ahead.Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Tran Thanh Liem made the remark while meeting with CEO of the Republic of Korea (RoK)’s Sae-A group James Ha on September 5.
Liem noted his province will enlarge existing industrial parks and build new ones to welcome more foreign investors, thus expanding the total industrial park area to 14,000ha by 2020.
It is going to devise a number of concrete policies to attract foreign investment, hoping that foreign firms will step up operations in Binh Duong and help fuel local economic growth.
The provincial People’s Committee, departments and sectors are ready to provide favourable conditions in terms of administrative procedures, land and factory construction so as to give investors the best possible business environment, he said.
The official added Binh Duong also wants to receive sincere feedback on relevant issues from entrepreneurs in order to make appropriate adjustments.
For his part, James Ha said more than 7,000 of his group’s 19,000 employees in Vietnam are working in Binh Duong. Sae-A is currently concentrating on apparel production, but it intends to expand investment to electronics and high technology, which suits the local industrial development orientation.
According to the Binh Duong administration, the RoK is the third biggest foreign investor in the province, following China’s Taiwan and Singapore, with 619 projects worth over 2.69 billion USD in total. RoK investors have invested 306 million USD in 16 new projects and 17 existing ones so far this year.
Southern Binh Duong province has been striving to build a friendly administration and turn itself into an ideal destination for investors.
To this end, Binh Duong has spared no effort to reform public administrative procedures related to investment by cutting time for business establishment and investment registration procedures.
Furthermore, meetings between authorities and enterprises have been held regularly to receive feedback and proposals from businesses in order to help them overcome difficulties and boost production in an effective and sustainable manner.
The province has also worked to improve local infrastructure in the fields of transportation, water and power supply and environmental treatment, and to expand industrial parks and clear lands for new projects.
Local authorities plan to promote human resources development to meet demand of investors and build more residential apartments for workers in industrial parks.
Statistics showed that Binh Duong has lured over 4 billion USD in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2016 and the first half of 2017. By July 31, the province had attracted 2,959 FDI projects, worth 27.56 billion USD, ranking second among 63 provinces and cities in terms of FDI attraction.
The manufacturing and processing sector attracted nearly 77 percent of the total FDI during the first months of this year with 1.28 billion USD pouring into 129 existing and new projects.
Chinese Taipei topped the list of 23 foreign investors that registered to invest or add capital into existing projects during the first half of 2017 with 524 million USD, accounting for 32.4 percent of the total capital. It was followed by Singapore and the Republic of Korea.
