The Hanoi People's Committee has submitted to the Prime Minister a plan to set up a 10.5-trillion VND (481 million USD) information technology hub in Long Bien district.

The committee has picked electronics and informatics firm Hanel Ltd. Company as the investor of the project, which will cover more than 43ha, reported the Vietnam News Agency’s English language daily Vietnam News.

About 942 billion VND (43.6 million USD) will be allocated for infrastructure construction, while more than 9.5 trillion VND (437 million USD) will be used to develop functional areas.

The construction of the project is scheduled to start this year and be completed by 2019.

The committee said in the report sent to the Prime Minister that the project would contribute to developing Vietnam as one of the countries with strong information technology and telecommunications development.

The project was aimed at developing a knowledge-based economy and the IT industry, particularly in the field of software, and at drawing more investment from both local and foreign investors, it said.

Director General of Hanel Nguyen Quoc Binh said it would be an open software park, which would be designed following new trends in several countries.

Apart from facilities for the development of the software industry, the project will also have vocation training schools for programmers and engineers, services centres and IT trade and electronics business areas and other facilities.

At present, Hanoi has only one concentrated IT park in Cau Giay district. The 8.5ha park has more than 300 enterprises of different sectors, with IT firms comprising 28.8 percent of the enterprises, such as Financing and Promoting Technology Corporation (FPT) and Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel).-VNA