The Ho Chi Minh City government looks set to build five new software parks in the city and one in each of Da Lat city and Nam Dinh province, the Saigon Times Daily reported.

The city government has asked the Ministry of Information and Communications to seek approval from Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung for recognising the Quang Trung software park model and putting it on the master plan for developing industrial parks until 2020 with a vision to 2025.

At present, Quang Trung Software City (QTSC) and National University of HCM City IT Park are those having legal status in the chain. Quang Trung-Da Lat and Quang Trung-Nam Dinh software parks will be part of the chain as well.

HCM City is considering building three more parks – QTSC No.2, Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) IT Park in District 10 and Tan Binh District and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) Science Park in District 10.

According to the city government, QTSC is now home to 119 software companies, with 67 of them Vietnamese-invested and the remainder foreign-owned. Some are famous ones such as HP and IBM (US) and KDDI (Japan) while others hold global quality management certificates, such as TMA Solutions, Global CyberSoft (GCS), Larion, Misa and Swiss Post Solutions (SPS).

Companies at QTSC supply over 140 products and services for partners in over 20 countries worldwide, and employ around 16,000 workers at the moment.-VNA