VietNamNet Bridge – Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park in Hanoi has been operational for over a decade but it has only attracted 68 investment projects in that time and it is described as a ‘slow investment attraction’ by local experts.

Pham Dai Duong, deputy director of Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park, said the park had licensed the projects covering a combined 340 hectares with total commitments of some VND52.24 trillion.

Among these, 20 projects have come into operation and 13 others are still being developed.

In 2012 alone, Duong said, seven projects on more than 110 hectares had been licensed by the park’s authority with total pledges of VND20.8 trillion.

Regarding the slow deployment of the nation’s first hi-tech facility, Duong said the park was established 15 years ago but it had faced many objective and subjective difficulties during the implementation. For instance, he noted, the park was put into operation right at a time of the 1998-1999 economic recession in Asia, adding the project was just restarted in late 2006.

To speed up the construction and development progress of the park, the Prime Minister had asked for Japanese support to continue carrying out the scheme.

As such, Japan already helped draw up an adjusted comprehensive zoning plan for the project in 2008 and made a report on the feasibility of developing infrastructure there in 2009. The foreign partner also agreed to provide Vietnam ODA loans of more than 30 billion yen to construct the project’s infrastructure.

Japan supported the park’s authority to enhance its management capability and promote investment. Designing detailed infrastructure of the facility had been done last year, with the infrastructure’s construction set to be started from March and complete in 2016.

Duong ascribed the slow-moving investment pace at the park to the authority’s intent on focusing on improving its infrastructure rather than calling for investment in recent times.

He said the park has an ideal location as it is near the Vietnam National University-Hanoi and part of a broader plan to develop urban areas in the west of the capital city, and that it takes only 20 minutes to travel between the park and the downtown area and around 50 minutes to get to Noi Bai International Airport. Moreover, it has convenient road access to key seaports in the country’s north.

Source: SGT