On October 24, Saigon High-Tech Park (SHTP) celebrated the 10th founding anniversary (October 24, 2002 - 2012) and received the Third-grade Labour Order. After 10 years of construction and development, SHTP has developed into a technical economic zone which attracts much foreign investment and mobilises domestic resources of science and technology. It also serves as an important infrastructure, creates motivation for modernisation, and accelerates the change of economic growth paradigm from extensive orientation to intensive dimension.
Set up in October 2002, SHTP has to date attracted 66 projects with a total registered investment capital of more than US$2.219 billion, including 33 FDI projects worth US$1.78 billion and 33 domestic projects capitalised at US$430 million. Many world-leading high-tech corporations locate their projects in the park, including Intel with a chipset manufacturing and assembly plant, Jabil with an electronic component manufacturing plant (United States), Nidec with a step motor plant (Japan), and Datalogic with a bar code reader manufacturing plant (Italy).
Among 66 licensed projects, 29 have gone into operation, accumulating production value of US$3.612 billion, inclusive of US$3.575 billion from exports, and generating jobs for close to 17,000 workers. This park has made a significant contribution to the city’s economic restructuring. Export turnover of high-tech products always doubles year after year. Specifically, exports valued at US$ 53.9 million in 2007, US$131 million in 2008, US$259 million in 2009, US$501 million in 2010, and US$ 1 billion in 2011. In the first nine months of 2012, exports reached US$1.611 billion and were estimated to top US$2 billion in the year.
According to construction and development orientations towards 2020, SHTP determines to become a centre of high-tech industrial production and its high-tech product applications will account for 35 per cent of the city’s GDP. It will also become a powerful high-tech research and development centre, link research - development and training, incubate high-tech with production and services, promote technological renovation, business incubation, and commercialisation of high-tech products, and build up internal capacity of high-tech research and development.
Addressing at the ceremony, Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan praised SHTP’s achievements over the past 10 years. SHTP is a leader in attracting scientists, and leading domestic and foreign high-tech companies to locate production and research projects, which practically contributes to the development of science and technology sector in particular and the growth of the city and the country as a whole. SHTP development model is a vivid example for the Ministry of Science and Technology continue studying and building development mechanisms and policies to actually facilitate the development of high-tech zones in the country in the coming time. Minister Nguyen Quan required that SHTP needs to speed up research and development activities and create different accents in comparison with other industrial parks and export processing zones.
Mr Le Thanh Hai, Secretary of the Party Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, said SHTP must become the nucleus of economic restructuring and economic growth pattern change. The SHTP Management Board was told to take practical measures to promote and support investment projects underway, implement commitments to investors, accelerate cooperation with universities, institutes, and experts of science and technology. In addition, it needs to continue attracting investment and encourage high-tech applications in production and training in SHTP. At the same time, it needs to have policies to encourage and entice high-tech human resources, including overseas Vietnamese, foreign scientists engaged in research, development and training with SHTP, and form companies to capitalise on research results.
On this occasion, SHTP Management granted investment certificates to two projects, Saigon Industry Corporation and United Healthcare Joint Stock Company, with a total registered capital of nearly US$20 million.
Thanh Tan
Vietnamese
