New industrial zones planning in Ho Chi Minh under consideration

According to the City Statistics Office Of Ho Chi Minh City, in the first 5 months of 2021, the city received more than USD 1.34 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) capital, down 16.52% over the same period last year. Specifically, in May 2021, there were 187 newly licensed projects with registered capital of 378.8 million USD, down 58.4% in number of licenses and 52.3% in capital over the same period last year.

During a recent press conference, the Management Board of EPZs and IZs of Ho Chi Minh City (HEPZA) had been sharing on the current status of industrial land in Ho Chi Minh. Specifically, HEPZA said that Ho Chi Minh City is implementing programs to support the development of businesses and products in the rubber - plastic, mechanical - automation, and food - food processing industries. HEPZA is assigned the task of preparing the land fund to receive these supporting industries in the direction of subdivisions.

A leader of HEPZA said: "We plan to arrange new Industrial Park in Binh Chanh (the industrial zone will named Pham Van Hai) and will be arranged in the direction of specialized subdivisions." In addition, he also said that Ho Chi Minh City is currently focusing on many industries and trade associations. Every industry needs a land fund for production, but the response is limited because the land fund is limited.

According to the planning, the industrial land bank of Ho Chi Minh City is 5,921 ha, the occupancy rate is about 72%. About 28% of the remaining land according to the planning, there are problems with land law, rental price, etc., so it cannot be put into operation. Recently, Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong personally worked with Hepza to solve and remove these problems, including the "freeing" of clean land for investors in parallel with the development of the land fund of new Pham Van Hai Industrial Park, Binh Chanh District (belonging to Pham Van Hai Farm).

He also worked with the Department of Natural Resources and Environment on setting aside an additional 2,000 hectares for industrial production, including converting land use purposes to industrial production. "Existing industrial parks have a land bank of 200-300 hectares. Hopefully, with the fierceness of the city's leaders, this year will be focused to solve legal problems, land rent, etc. and have a clean land fund to call for investment.", said a representative of HEPZA.

In addition, representative of HEPZA said that Ho Chi Minh City does not have a large land fund for industrial production like Dong Nai and Binh Duong province. Besides, when doing sites clearing, agricultural land is calculated based on residential land price, so it still remains situation of long-lasting compensation for clearing sites before opening industrial zones. This situation has lasted for many years and has not been resolved, which leads to construction encroachment is getting worse and worse. It is pushing the cost of compensation and clearance too high, HEPZA cannot solve it.