Saigon Hi-Tech Park to prioritize semiconducting, renewables

Ho Chi Minh City’s key high-tech focused business park SHTP aims to become a smart technology hub, and the core of the interactive and innovative urban area in the city’s eastern part by 2030.

“For its next stage of development, Saigon Hi-Tech Park, or SHTP, has a vision toward 2045 as a center of knowledge and innovation for the entire country,” Nguyen Anh Thi, head of the unit, told a ceremony held Saturday in HCMC to mark SHTP’s 20th anniversary, which was attended by Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat.

SHTP, located in Thu Duc city on HCMC’s outskirts, is seeking to attract more investment in high technology industries and projects with high added value, with priorities given to investors in semiconductors as well as clean and renewables energy sources, said Thi.

The park on October 21 debuted a chip design center to cash in on demand for semiconductors. The center, including a chip design lab, is a key step in developing a semiconductor industry in the country in the coming time. The lab is the first important infrastructure of the center and a move to implement the agreement signed in late August between the SHTP and Synopsys, a major American chip software firm.

Minister Dat stressed at Saturday’s ceremony that his technology ministry was finalizing a draft decree for prime ministerial approval on creating a more favorable legal corridor for Vietnam to lure investments into high-tech sectors.

Truong Gia Binh, chairman of Vietnamese tech heavyweight FPT, who represented SHTP corporate tenants at the event, said FPT would continue to work side by side with the SHTP. Binh said India was globally known for its software hub Bangalore, and China for Shenzhen, therefore HCMC or SHTP should embrace plans to serve as a national hub taking the lead in advanced technologies like big data or artificial intelligence.

Binh added that the entire world was eyeing a carbon neutrality target by 2060, with Vietnam’s goal being 2050, therefore clean and renewable energy, together with advanced energy storage technologies are hot investment trends.

SHTP plays a significant role in HCMC’s growth as it is home to lots of high-tech focused factories and facilities, including American giant chipmaker Intel, which has to date invested $1.5 billion into its testing facility in the park, and Samsung Electronics HCMC CE Complex (SEHC) with $2.841 billion invested by Korean tech giant Samsung.

The high-tech park currently houses 163 projects with a total registered capital of over $12 billion, including an FDI amount exceeding $10 billion. It has greatly contributed to the national economic transfer toward high technology and quality increase. SHTP estimates its 2022 exports at about $23 billion, equal to 52% of HCMC’s total export value this year.

According to the SHTP management unit, the park aims at attracting another $3 billion of investment into about 50 new hi-tech projects over the next few years. To back the goals, SHTP is going to accelerate public investment in its own core project - Scientific Space - on 93 hectares.