Hiep Phuoc Commune in the outlying district of Nha Be in Ho Chi Minh City is growing up to a bustling urban coastal zone, with hundreds of investment projects worth billions of dong.
Dau Tu Tai Chinh Newspaper has caught up with Doan Hong Tam, deputy general director of Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone JSC to interview him about the progress of the growth.
Dau Tu Tai Chinh Newspaper: How did the Hiep Phuoc Industry Zone manage to create edge over others as the zone is located in the outlying commune of Hiep Phuoc?
Doan Hong Tam: Earlier, the road from the city to the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone was very rough, with only Huynh Tan Phat Street being tartar coated. Only households alongside Nguyen Van Tao Street had electricity and there no power for production.
Water supply was also very limited, with the supply meeting up only one fifth of the actual demand.
To curb the issue, we built an underground water plant with an output of 10,000 cubic meters in Long An Province, which is five kilometers from the industrial zone. We also built a waste water treatment facility with an output of 3,000 cubic meters, which is expected to be expanded with the output being doubled.
The zone’s vital infrastructure is improved now, with roads leading to the zone being tartar coated and expanded. There are around 16,000 turns of container trucks going in and out the SPCT port in the zone daily.
We also have the entire fibre optic network set up by the telecommunication giant VNPT.
What is the preferential policy for businesses located in the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone?
At the end of 2008, we remained in the group of the industrial zones in outlying areas, which are offered preferential policies. Therefore businesses renting lands in the zone at that time enjoyed an exemption on the business tax.
Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone is set to become an urban coastal zone soon as it is located near Soai Rap River. Thus the ports in the industrial zone will help local importers and exporters reduce transportation costs significantly.
We also built an apartment building with 540 apartments for employees. Each apartment costs a monthly rental of VND200,000 per person. There are around 8,000 workers in the zone, of which 1,000 need to stay at the zone.
What are the current difficulties that businesses in the zone are coping with?
We have some problems with the electricity provider Hiep Phuoc Power. The electricity in the zone has been very stable so far and the price earlier was equal to the one of the state utility Electricity of Vietnam or EVN.
However, Hiep Phuoc Power said they suffered losses in the last five years as the increasing crude oil price pushed up the input costs, while their price were capped to a fixed level.
Thus they threatened to stop providing electricity and hand over the power grid to the EVN.
Another problem is that the costs of transporting goods from adjacent provinces of Dong Nai, Binh Duong and Long An to the SPCT port by container trucks moved up dramatically, while the project on a train way has not kicked off.
