Dong Nai (VNA) – The southern city of Dong Nai is shifting its foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy from attracting capital based on administrative boundaries to developing industry clusters, value chains and innovation ecosystems, with investment quality, efficiency, technology transfer, supply-chain participation and added value becoming key criteria.
The city is also moving toward managing projects throughout their life cycles, aiming to attract high-quality investment and build a strategic investment foundation in line with Politburo Resolution No. 10-NQ/TW on developing the foreign-invested economic sector.
From industrial hub to technology hub
Dong Nai is one of Vietnam’s early industrial development centres, with strong manufacturing capacity, a skilled workforce and established supply chains.
For 2021-2030, the city has planned 89 industrial parks covering about 43,386ha, including 44 operational parks spanning 15,183ha. Existing parks have leased 7,779ha, with an occupancy rate of about 54.37%.
Industrial parks, economic zones and hi-tech parks in Dong Nai have so far attracted 2,813 projects from investors from 45 countries and territories, including 1,966 FDI projects with total registered capital of about 38.5 billion USD and disbursed capital of 28.9 billion USD.
Including projects outside industrial parks, the city currently has 2,303 valid FDI projects worth 46.7 billion USD.
Dong Nai attracted 2.34 billion USD in FDI in the first nine months of 2026, equivalent to about 78% of its full-year target of 3 billion USD. The figure included 77 newly licensed projects with more than 1 billion USD in registered capital and 98 projects receiving additional investment of 1.29 billion USD.
The Dong Nai Industrial Zones Authority said the city’s priority was no longer simply to attract projects to fill industrial parks. Dong Nai was renewing FDI management based on project life cycles and development outcomes.
For strategic FDI projects, indicators will cover disbursed capital, land-use efficiency, technological level, energy consumption, emissions, R&D, technology transfer, domestic procurement, links with local enterprises, job quality and budget contributions. The indicators will be digitised and regularly updated to facilitate dialogue, resolve difficulties and assess investors’ commitments.
From quantity to value-chain development
At a recent private-sector forum in Dong Nai, Dang Hong Anh, Chairman of the Vietnam Young Entrepreneurs Association, said the priority should be the value each project generates for the local economy rather than the number of projects attracted.
He called for a shift toward organising value chains and enabling Vietnamese enterprises to become direct and tier-two and tier-three suppliers to major corporations and FDI firms.
Nguyen Van Ut, Chairman of the Dong Nai city People's Committee, said the city was prioritising selective FDI in high technology, innovation, digital transformation, green economy, supporting industries, R&D centres and other high-value sectors. It will strengthen links between foreign-invested and domestic enterprises, promote technology transfer and develop supporting industries and supply chains.
Targeting strategic investors
The Dong Nai city Party Committee is drafting an action plan to implement Resolution No. 10-NQ/TW, identifying breakthrough tasks, growth-driving areas, strategic infrastructure and orientations for next-generation FDI.
The city plans to prioritise global technology groups investing in semiconductors, aerospace, quantum technology, biotechnology, new materials, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital technology.
Projects that are labour-intensive, energy-intensive, land-inefficient, highly polluting or focused on low-value processing will be strictly screened.
Phan Viet Phuong, deputy head in charge of the authority said that Dong Nai was moving beyond industrial parks toward an industrial-service-logistics-innovation urban model linked with Long Thanh International Airport, seaports, logistics centres, digital infrastructure, urban areas, services and workforce-training facilities.
Three key functional areas are being developed: the 119ha Long Thanh Digital Technology Zone for chip manufacturing, AI and R&D; the 300ha Binh An Innovation Zone for startups, research and technology testing; and the 200ha Dong Xoai Science and Technology Zone for training, research and production links.
Existing industrial parks will be restructured toward green, smart, circular and low-emission models, while new parks will prioritise specialised, hi-tech and eco-industrial development. The goal is to build Dong Nai into a multifunctional growth pole, a strategic gateway of the southern key economic region and an airport city with global connectivity, Phuong said./.
