Covering an area of 2,694.4 square kilometers (roughly 0.83 percent of the country’s total land area and around 12 percent of the southeastern region) and having a population of around 1.73 million, Binh Duong has seven administrative units, including Thu Dau Mot city which is its economic, political and cultural center. It is home to fifteen ethnic groups with the Kinh (Viet) being the most populous group followed by the Hoa (Sino-Vietnamese) and Khmer.
The province boasts a fairly high economic growth and dynamic industrial development compared to other provinces across the country. In the first half of 2013, its gross domestic product saw a year-on-year rise of 9.5 percent, with industry-construction sector increasing by 6.6 percent; services, 14.5 percent and agriculture, 1.3 percent.
The province’s industrial sector continued to grow at a stable rate with an industrial production value exceeding VND 76.6 trillion in the first seven months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 12.1 percent. The import-export sector also saw a positive rise with growing number of export orders. It attained an export turnover of USD 7.078 billion in the first seven months of the year, 15.7 percent higher than that in the same period last year, and an import turnover of USD 5.821 billion, up by 16 percent.
Investment promotion
According to the provincial Planning and Investment Department, the province has so far this year attracted a total of 2,162 FDI projects with a combined registered capital amount of USD 18.4 billion. By mid-July, it has attracted USD 756 million, attaining 75.6 percent of its yearly target. In the reviewed period, 54 new FDI projects were licensed with a total investment of USD 497.5 million, while 61 others received an additional investment of USD 258.5 million.
Among projects licensed to date in the province, two are capitalized at over USD 1 billion each. The Tokyu Binh Duong Garden City of the Becamex Tokyu - a joint venture between
The province is currently home to 28 industrial parks occupying a total area of 9,423 hectares, of which 26 have been commissioned. It has recorded considerable results of FDI attraction in these industrial parks thanks to frequent FDI promotion campaigns conducted by infrastructure development companies and regular introduction of the investment environment in industrial parks to foreign investors. Investment promotion focusing on
FDI has importantly contributed to generating jobs, increasing productivity and improving human resource quality in the province. The foreign-invested sector has so far generated 470,000 direct jobs and hundreds of thousands indirect jobs for the locals in the construction and service sectors, contributing to improving the quality of social welfare and life of the local community.
The provincial Industry and Trade Department reported that in the first seven months of the year, the foreign- invested sector earned an export turnover of over USD 5.9 million, including USD 153,000 from electronic appliances; USD 557,000 from leather and footwear; USD 838,000 from garments and textiles; USD 847,000 from timber products, etc.
Le Thanh Cung, chairman of Binh Duong People’s Committee, said the provincial administration has always asked departments and sectors, especially functional agencies, to simplify procedures under the “one-stop-shop” mechanism to create the most favorable conditions for investors. Every year, provincial leaders pay visits to local businesses and hold dialogues with business associations of foreign investors in the province so as to promptly grasp their situation and needs, listen to their recommendations and discuss with them on addressing difficulties and problems.
In order to achieve the target of attracting USD 1 billion of FDI this year, the province has prepared sufficient clear ground areas, intensified administrative reforms and helped improve the business administration capacity for infrastructure investors in industrial parks. It is calling for investment from business groups with financial strengths and big market shares and attracting hi-tech industries to create products with high added value, such as electric, electronic, pharmaceutical and precision mechanical products. Priority is also given to supporting industries for textile and garment, leather footwear, mechanical engineering and wood furniture industries and service sectors of healthcare, education, finance-banking and urban socio-economic infrastructure development.
According to Government Decree No. 124/2008/ND-CP of December 11, 2008, from 2009 enterprises newly established under investment projects in economic zones and hi-tech parks are entitled to tax exemption for four years and 50 percent reduction of payable tax amounts for the subsequent nine years and eligible for the 10 percent tax rate for 15 years. The majority of enterprises in the province which either employ between 500 and 5,000 local workers or have investment projects on production in industrial parks established under the Prime Minister’s decisions have enjoyed tax exemption.
According to the provincial Planning and Investment Department, the province will create favorable conditions for its major businesses to invest in infrastructure development in a synchronous, civilized and modern manner. It will limit new processing industry projects which depend largely on imported materials, intensively consume energy and natural resources and are likely to cause environmental pollution. Meanwhile, it will continue prioritizing the development of electronic manufacture, agricultural machinery, farm produce processing; environment and energy saving; and automobile and auto part manufacture industries into key ones with high added value and international competitiveness.
In addition to ensuring enterprises’ access to transparent and public information on socio-economic and sectoral development master plans and master plans of the province and its investment policies and objectives, the province will adopt incentive policies to support laborers’ self-training and enterprises’ employee retraining for improving human resource quality, diversity vocational training forms, and provide loans for job training.
It will relocate polluting establishments and plants into industrial parks which are obliged to build and commission concentrated wastewater treatment facilities. It will also require enterprises in industrial parks to have waste treatment plans and connect their treatment facilities with industrial parks’ treatment systems.
Tourism development potential
Binh Duong has great tourism potential with Lai Thieu orchards, which are well known for its variety of tropical fruit trees and considered the lungs of the province and a green paradise for eco-tourism.
The province is also home to famous traditional craft villages in the southeastern region, such as Tuong Binh Hiep lacquer painting village, Minh Long and Tan Phuoc Khanh porcelain village, and boasts scenic landscapes along Sai Gon, Dong Nai and Be rivers and around large reservoirs of Dau Tieng, Can Nom, Da Ban and Binh An. These constitute favorable conditions for offering tourist products and services aimed at developing a tourism market, especially for ecological and river-sightseeing tours.
Over the past years, the province’s ecological and resort tourism have recorded good results. To further develop tourism, the province has set forth the objective to make tourism a key sector in its economic structure, contributing to the provincial economic restructuring, creating branded tourist products imbued with local cultural features, using revenues from tourism to conserve and efficiently exploit historical relics, values of cultural heritages and the eco-environment, and assuring the sustainable development of both tourism and the eco-environment.
In order to welcome 5 million tourists, around 10 percent of whom are foreigners, and a tourism turnover of VND 2.2 trillion by 2015, the province needs a total investment capital of around VND 11.7 trillion during 2011-2020, including VND 5.4 trillion for 2011-2015.-