Ba Ria-Vung Tau raises the maritime bar
The local investment climate, through infrastructure and human resources development, has been fine-tuned with specialised industrial parks (IPs) reserved for perse industries like supporting and seaport logistics.
"Ba Ria-Vung Tau will lay out the red carpet to welcome investors doing business in the province, striving to set up an increasingly open, dynamic and highly competitive investment climate to facilitate investors, from there materialising provincial development targets," said provincial people's committee chairman Tran Minh Sanh.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau is in a dynamic economic development area with over 14 IPs catering to shipbuilding, oil and gas, mechanical manufacturing, electronics and chemical industries and seaport services. However, these sectors' associated supporting industries remain underdeveloped with most parts imported.
In this context, developing supporting industries centres in the province is proven a step in the right direction to prop the development of major industries, particularly of mechanical manufacturing.
Three priority provincial areas reserved for developing supporting industries are Phu My III, B1-Tien Hung and B1-Dai Duong IPs. Besides, Ba Ria-Vung Tau is in the process of building a specific IP on mechanical manufacturing positioned in Phu My III IP for Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Hard on the heels of some Japanese local government visits to the province, perse business group from many Japanese locations have arrived to source investment opportunities.
Significantly, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has come to the province to survey the possibility of building a specific supporting industries cluster catered to Japanese firms and delivered positive appraisals about the province's geographical location as well as its active preparations in terms of infrastructure.
Aware of investor needs, the province has ramped up training to catch up with businesses' needs for quality manpower parallel to building perse transport infrastructure as well as public works. Besides, infrastructure investors at the provincial IPs are making huge efforts to make their IPs a top choice for investors.
As an ideal opportunity to make the provinces image popular to businesses and investor communities, Vietnam's international seaport festival, the first of its kind in Vietnam, is slated to take place in Vung Tau city in November, 2012.
Through its perse activities, the festival will present policies, and mechanisms as well as Vietnam's seaport and ocean tourism potential, foster trade and investment promotion and provide a platform for investors at home and abroad to source cooperative opportunities for Vietnam's marine economic development.
In the meantime, the event will be where visitors find the world's latest technologies in seaport development with associated products and services and provide excellent opportunities for marketing in logistics, marine, import-export and modernisation of customs procedures up to international standards.
The venue will also pave the way for exchange of experiences in port management, increasing connectivity between shipping firms and logistics suppliers, and provide inputs to compiling Vietnam seaport and seaport urban centre development strategies.
This first-ever festival is expected to spur marine sector and seaport development of the country and of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, striving to turn the location into a modern seaport centre as seen in the developed world.
Socially, the seaport festival will help better people's awareness inform the international community about Vietnam's sovereignty over certain areas of sea and islands, and manifest the leading role of Vietnam's marine economy in this new development era, contributing to strengthening national development, defense and security.
To this end, this first international seaport festival is helping to materialise Vietnam's marine economic development strategy targets, turning Vietnam into 'a port venue for peace and development'.
Source VIR