The Saigon Hi-Tech Park should adopt incentives to attract quality human resources in high-tech fields, including leading Vietnamese, overseas Vietnamese and foreign scientists, Le Thanh Hai, Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee has said.

At a meeting to celebrate the park's 10 years of operation on October 24, Hai said that although the volume of production and exports were much lower than those from export processing zones and industrial parks in the city, the achievements posted by the park were significant because of the nature of its high-tech products.

The park has been recognised an important facility and an impetus for the modernisation and restructuring of the city's economy, Hai said.

According to Le Hoai Quoc, head of the park's management board, the Saigon HI-Tech Park has attracted 66 investment projects and currently houses 61 projects with registered capital of more than 2.2 billion USD.

Tenants include 33 foreign direct investment projects capitalised at nearly 1.79 billion USD and 33 domestically-invested projects with total capital of over 430 million USD.

Foreign investors in the park include the chip manufacturer Intel and electronics component manufacturer Jabil, both from the US , and Nidec from Japan and Datalogic from Italy .

Twenty-nine projects are operational, attaining accumulative production of 3.612 billion USD, including exports of 3.5 million USD.

Production from these projects rose from 1 billion USD in 2011 to over 1.6 billion USD in the first nine months of 2012. The projects employ a total of 17,000 local residents.

Under the HCM City’s development master plan by 2020, hi-tech products are expected to make up 35 percent of the city's GDP.

The Minister for Science and Technology, Nguyen Quan, said the park deserved its leading position in attracting investment and infrastructure development.

He also asked the park management board to continue to focus on research and development activities to enhance expansion of the park.-VNA