The company said the city was home to stable raw material sources and two years later it decided to build a modern animal feed factory and a frozen warehouse at the Tra Noc Industrial Park. According to the company, Can Tho offered more advantages than other localities, with a network of ports and an airport, which are one of the most important conditions attracting investors. The company’s projects are among hundreds operating in the city since 2004.

Located in a trading intersection of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Can Tho City is the commercial-service, science-technology and educational and training hub of the south western provinces. With its favourable geographical conditions, the city has long been a lucrative destination for local and foreign investors.

In late 1987, Vietnam’s Foreign Investment Law was issued and just one year later, Can Tho City granted investment licences to seven foreign investment projects engaged in foodstuff processing, animal feeds, leather tanning, garments and fine art crafts.

Recently, many big projects have been implemented in the city, serving as a driving force for the whole delta to take off. These project include Can Tho Bridge, a project to expand and upgrade Tra Noc Airport into Can Tho International Airport, the 2,800 megawatt O Mon Thermoelectricity Plant, O Mon-Xa No Irrigation Works, South Hau River National Road, upgrading and expansion of the National Road 1A from Ho Chi Minh City via Ca Mau province to Can Tho and the Ho Chi Minh City-Can Tho Highway, whose first phase is under construction.

Particularly, in early 2009, Tra Noc Airport officially came into operation. In early 2010, Can Tho Bridge will be officially put into use, laying foundations for infrastructure development and further investment attraction in the city. The construction works are awakening the city’s potential and advantages for investors. Since early this year, many investors have come here to explore investment opportunities and rent land at the local industrial parks.

According to Can Tho Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (CEPIZA), in the first half of 2009, the city’s industrial parks successfully lured 17 new investment projects with a total registered capital volume of $134.659 million. In addition, eight projects registered expanded capital of $49.115 million.

Between January and June this year, Can Tho’s industrial parks reached 183.7 per cent of the plan to coax investment set for the whole 2009. Enterprises within these industrial parks earned a total turnover of $700.3 million, of which the industrial production turnover was $387.48 million, export turnover was $230.46 million and commercial service turnover sat at $312.83 million.

At present, Can Tho’s industrial parks are home to 185 active projects, whose total registered capital volume is $1.515 billion. Of which, 138 projects, or 74.5 per cent of total registered projects, have officially come into operation, with 105 locally-owned enterprises (including 68 producers and 37 service providers) and 21 foreign-owned enterprises (including 17 producers and four service providers).

Besides these enterprises’ great contributions to local economic development, the industrial parks have also provided employment for 31,347 workers in the city and neighbouring provinces. However, chief of CEPIZA Vo Thanh Hung said investors still encountered slow construction at industrial parks, in which site clearance was the biggest hurdle.

Hung said the investment capital should have been far bigger than what it was. However, the unavailability of sites for investors had forced the city to witness many opportunities fly away. To address this serious problem, CEPIZA has been in close coordination with the city’s authorised agencies to concentrate all efforts on site clearance and build necessary infrastructure systems in the industrial parks in order to meet investors’ critical need of sites.

The authority has already asked infrastructure development companies, who also are the investors of the industrial parks, to expedite a plan to create at least 100 hectares ready for investors. “We have required them to design detailed programmes and make weekly construction reports to the authority. Their programmes must include feasible solutions and obstructions that need to be removed,” Hung said. According to Hung, the authority is also focusing on accelerating administrative reforms in investment procedures as its priority investment attraction strategy.

At present, the board is implementing an “one-door” model under the ISO 9001-2000 standard and an “unobstructed one door” model for investment procedure approval. Under this model, all related information, registration forms and procedures are posted and updated daily on the authority’s website www.canthoepiza.gov.vn, which will help investors to rapidly prepare necessary investment application files.

With regard to appraising and approving investors’ portfolios, investors must submit their portfolios at the CEPIZA’s “one-door” unit. After that the portfolios will be transferred to authorised agencies in charge of appraising and approving investment portfolios. Then, the “one-door” unit will inform investors of final appraisal results of their portfolios.

For the whole of 2009, despite the global economic downturn, CEPIZA has targeted to attract about $230-$250 million worth of investment projects, while revenues of industrial production and services would be $700-800 million and $600-700 million respectively and exports at $500 million. The contributions to the state budget would be VND1.2-1.5 trillion ($68.1 million-$85.2 million).