Textile factory at the Phong Dien Industrial Park in the central province of Thua Thien Hue. (Source: VNA)Thua Thien Hue (VNA) – The People’s Committee of the central province of Thua Thien-Hue on November 17 held an online dialogue with the focus placed on improving the investment environment, solving difficulties and motivating enterprises.
Chairman of the Thua Thien-Hue People’s Committee Nguyen Van Cao said the province chose 2016 as the “Year of Businesses” and since the middle of the year, along with some north central provinces, Thua Thien-Hue faced the sea environmental incident which has harmed production as well as the lives of locals.
With a view to reducing difficulties for enterprises and encouraging them to drive the province’s economy, Thua Thien-Hue has implemented programmes to help enterprises develop, promote startups and create favourable conditions for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The province also focused on drawing and supporting investment by legalising policies to give investors high incentives in line with law.
Based on these policies, the province has allocated capital to build some infrastructure works inside and outside industrial parks and industrial clusters like electricity, water, transport, wastewater to accelerate technical infrastructure projects of industrial parks and industrial clusters.
Thua Thien-Hue also concentrated on developing transport infrastructure like the La Son – Tuy Loan Expressway, the national road 49B, 49A, the port No. 3, the Chan May – Lang Co port to help connect with the central key economic region.
Thua Thien-Hue is currently home to seven industrial parks with total area of 2,700 hectares. The parks have attracted 137 local projects with total registered capital of 63 trillion VND (2.8 billion USD). Disbursed capital so far has reached 17 trillion VND (760 million USD).
The parks are also accommodating 92 foreign direct investment projects with combined capital of 2.65 billion USD. Disbursed capital has reached 908 million USD.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises’ total revenue in 2015 was 650 million USD, up 18 percent against the same period last year, and contributed 1.5 trillion VND (68 million USD) to the province’s budget. The projects have created 17,500 jobs for local workers.
Thua Thien-Hue ranks 25th in the country, 4th out of five provinces in the central key economic region and sixth out of 13 provinces in the central-Central Highlands region in terms of investment attraction.
In the first 11 months of 2016, the province has granted licences to nine new projects and the capital adjustment of two existing projects with a total capital of 23.5 million USD.
Hoang Viet Trung, Deputy Director of the Thua Thien-Hue Department of Planning and Investment, said the province has achieved some results in attracting FDI capital but it is still below expectations.
The province will implement solutions to attract foreign investors, focusing on prestigious investors with strong financial capability from Japan, the Republic of Korea or Singapore.
Thua Thien-Hue plans to turn itself into a centre for the garment and textile industry in the central region, including the development of a support area of 400 hectares at the Phong Dien industrial park. The area will develop some key products with advanced technologies.
The province’s garment and textile sector makes up from 35-38 percent of the province’s industrial value and 75 percent of export value and prꦕovides jobs to 20,000 local labourers but has to import from 80-85 percent of input materials.-VNA
