Ho Chi Minh City needs to zone specific areas for support and high-tech
industries in its industrial parks in order to drive the development of
these fields, a business insider has said.

At a workshop on June
27, Vu Van Hoa, head of the management board of the HCM City Export
Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza), cited a Vietnam –
Japan technology park in the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone as example.

The
park, expected to be operational from this October, is hoped to attract
investment from Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises into
high-tech supporting industries, he added.

Participants said
they believe such a measure will help push up the industries, which are
among the city’s top priorities, as said by Vice Chairman of the
municipal People’s Committee Le Manh Ha, but still grow less than
expected in both quantity and quality.

Hirotaka Yasuzumi,
managing director of the Japan External Trade Organisation Office in the
city, said Vietnam needs to focus its investment on specific areas for
support and high-tech industries. This will form a network connecting
foreign direct invested and domestic enterprises in the production
chain, thus facilitating the science-technology transfer progress.

He
noted that Japanese businesses have high demand for inexpensive and
quality products of Vietnamese firms operating in the support industry.

However,
domestic enterprises have met only 32 percent of the demand, lower than
that of other Southeast Asian countries, he added.

At the
workshop, Hepza inked an agreement with the Saigon High-Tech Park and
the municipal Department of Industry and Trade on boosting cooperation
in managing and attracting investment into the industries.-VNA