Ho Chi Minh City is planning to build a special economic zone encompassing districts 7, Binh Chanh, Nha Be and Can Gio, and part of the city’s south, the Saigon Times Daily newspaper reported.

According to the newspaper, in a document issued last week, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Le Hoang Quan said the economic zone was one of the major projects to support the city’s sustainable development for 2016-2020 with a vision toward 2030.

The special economic zone is expected to create a catalyst for production and business, investment attraction, export and import, services, tourism, infrastructure, seaport, and marine development.

The plan for the special economic zone is now in its infancy and is scheduled to be ready in the third quarter this year. Currently, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Interior Affairs is assisting the city government in establishing a team responsible for analysing the scale of the zone; reviewing existing zoning plans, investment methods and policies; and building an implementation roadmap for the project.

In December last year, the Government approved a master zoning plan for socio-economic development in Ho Chi Minh City until 2020 with a vision toward 2025. This plan envisages a system of satellite urban areas, industrial clusters, commercial areas and special economic zones.

The city’s economy will be developed based on a service-industry-agriculture structure with priorities given to value-added and main industries, including engineering, electronics and information technology, chemistry-rubber and food processing as well as biotechnology, green industry, garment and footwear fashion design.

Ho Chi Minh City needs total investment of nearly 109,000 trillion VND in 2011-2025 with only 8 percent of it sourced from the State budget and the rest from other sources.-VNA