Hitachi Asia Ltd on August 5 announced the establishment of its subsidiary firm in Ho Chi Minh City, giving the company greater access to one of the region’s most promising economies.

Established with initial capital of approximately 500,000 USD, Hitachi Asia ( Vietnam ) Co. Ltd will also help its parent company penetrate deeper into infrastructure, power systems and IT systems firms in Vietnam .

“Vietnam’s economic growth provides plenty of business opportunities for Hitachi to fulfil the market demand for social infrastructure products, services and solutions,” said Yukio Toyoshima, managing director of Hitachi Asia Ltd.

The Tokyo-based company entered into a 37 billion JPY (376 million USD) contract with the Management Authority for HCM City’s Urban Railways in June to construct Vietnam’s first urban railway in the southern city.

Hitachi is to deliver subsystems including 17 train sets with a total of 51 carriages, a signalling system, a telecommunications system including wireless train radio and a power supply system, as well as platform screen doors, an automatic fare collection system and depot facilities.

It is also scheduled to undertake five years’ maintenance work after the start of commercial operations, with details due to be stipulated in a separate agreement.

The new urban railway is scheduled to begin operation in early 2018.

Hitachi is a leading global electronics company with approximately 326,000 employees worldwide. The company’s consolidated revenues for the fiscal year 2012 (ended March 31, 2013 ) totalled 9,041 billion JPY (96.1 billion USD.-VNA