Industrial parks (IPs) in Lam Dong province are playing more important roles in promoting provincial economic development. In the coming time, Lam Dong will create most favourable conditions for investors to develop industrial zone infrastructure in order to attract more investment capital into the province.
To date, Lam Dong province has three centrally approved industrial zones with total planned area of 855.32 hectares. The 185 ha Loc Son Industrial Park prefers investors in coffee, tea, silk, brick, building materials, aluminium, stone tile, electronics, woodwork, footwear, garment and others. The 174 ha Phu Hoi Industrial Park is designed for investors operating in food processing, vegetable, seafood, milk, sugar, wine, cake, jam, candy, fertilizer, construction material, advanced brick, forest product, woodwork, plywood, metallurgy, chemical, leather tanning, adhesive, bentoxite, diatomite and tin. The 496.32-ha Tan Phu Industrial - Urban Zone is calling for infrastructure developers.
According to Mr Le Dinh Phuoc, Director of Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority, site clearance and land compensation have been completed for 253.34 hectares for industrial purposes and 39.60 hectares for residences. Major infrastructure items have been built, including traffic, electricity, water supply, and telecommunications systems.
To date, the authority has granted investment certificates to 53 projects in industrial parks, of which 11 are foreign-invested with a registered capital of US$43.11 million and 42 are Vietnamese-invested with a total registered capital of VND3,230 billion. They leased 125.8 hectares of land and generated jobs for 7,687 workers. As many as 20 projects, including five wholly foreign-led projects, have gone into operation and employed 1,030 workers while the rest are underway.
Mr Phuoc said production and business activities of companies in industrial parks progressed steadily in the past years. Their revenues from 2005 to 2010 totalled US$856 million, of which US$522 million came from exports and US$334 million from domestic sales. Their import spending was just US$15 million. Lam Dong province has issued preferential policies to attract more investment capital and helped companies access soft loans. It also offered extra priorities for projects using advanced technology to process local materials like silk, clothing, coffee, tea, kaolin, diatomite, steel and construction materials.
The outcomes have proved the policy of developing industrial parks as it helps draw more investment capital, specially FDI capital, speed up technology transfer, train human resources, and acquire modern governance experience. Industrial parks also help accelerate economic restructuring as they boost industrial production and exportation, and create spill-over impacts on urbanization and the service industry. They also provide more new jobs for local people, thus gradually improving their living standards both spiritually and materially.
According to Phuoc, the central tasks of industrial zones in the next five years are to promote investment attraction, fill up rentable spaces, and improve the quality of investment projects to increase industrial production and export value.
The province targets to basically fill up the leasable area of the first phase of Phu Hoi Industrial Park and 80 percent of space in Son Loc Industrial Park by the end of 2011. It will focus on calling investment capital for Tan Phu Industrial - Urban Zone and preparing investment procedures for Dai Lao Industrial - Urban Zone in 2011 - 2015. By the end of 2013, Son Loc and Phu Hoi industrial parks will be fully occupied by investors. By 2015, Tan Phu Industrial - Urban Zone will lease 30 percent of its area. Companies in industrial parks will generate total revenues of US$1,343 million in the 2011-2015 stage, including US$738 million from exports.
Anh Thu
Vietnamese
