Work begins on $167 mln eco-circular industrial park in northern Vietnam

Vietnamese private group Hanaka has begun construction on the Gia Binh II Industrial Park, the first eco-circular industrial park in Bac Ninh, a manufacturing hub in northern Vietnam.

The VND3.96 trillion ($167.3 million), 250-hectare facility covers the four communes of Nhan Thang, Binh Duong, Thai Bao, and Van Ninh in Gia Binh district.

It aims to host modern and eco-friendly technology in information-technology, electronics, and hi-tech sectors.

Hanaka Group plans to complete basic infrastructure works including traffic, water supply, waste treatment and an electricity transformer for the industrial park towards leasing out land in the last quarter of this year and welcoming the first operational factory in the first quarter of 2024.

Bac Ninh plans a total of 16 industrial parks (IPs) covering 6,398 hectares in the province. Of these, 12 are operational. In the first half of this year, IPs in the province employed 294,000 people, down 14,000 compared to the end of last year. Bac Ninh natives accounted for 29% of the total number of IP employees.

According to the provincial IPs authority, enterprises expect further reductions in the number of workers in the third and fourth quarters of this year as business orders have declined or stopped.

Bac Ninh’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP) decreased 12.59% year-on-year in the first six months of this year. The drop was driven by a 17.56% fall in the industrial sector, particularly a drop of 20.51% in the sub-sector of electronics, computers and optical products. The provincial statistics office has attributed the underperformance to lower demand on the global market, the disrupted supply, and higher prices of materials.

In the first half, Bac Ninh licensed 139 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, up 89 projects year-on-year, with a total registered capital of $570.4 million, nearly quadruple last year’s. So far, the northern province, home to a Samsung factory, has licensed 1,934 FDI projects with a total registered capital of $24.22 billion.