Sembcorp Expands in Vietnam

Singapore’s Sembcorp is materializing its expansion in Vietnam through three major investments.

Singaporean conglomerate Sembcorp is looking to expand its presence in Vietnam as economic and political ties between Vietnam and Singapore are thriving.

With seven industrial parks running across Vietnam, SembCorp Development is exploring the possibility of building the eight Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in the central province of Quang Tri.

“We have to do our due diligence first to assess the commercial viability of this project. We also have to work together with our partners in Vietnam,” Sembcorp Development’s Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Teo said in Hanoi last week during a Vietnam visit of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The VSIPs are developed as a joint venture between Vietnam’s state-owned enterprise Becamex IDC and a consortium of three Singapore companies. This consortium is majority-led by Sembcorp Development, a fully-owned subsidiary of SembCorp Industries and the other two partners are Mitsubishi Corporation Development Asia and KPM Vietnam Investment.

The joint venture built the first VSIP in Binh Duong province two decades ago. The parks have attracted some $9 billion in investments and approximately 690 multinational companies.

SembCorp Development has also signed a deal with the government of Da Nang city to conduct a feasibility study for a new software park in the city on an area of 15 hectares.

The first phase of the project is set to kick off construction on an area of 5.3 hectares by the year-end and come into operation in 2019.

Another SembCorp unit, Sembcorp Utilities, inked an agreement to with Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade to develop the Dung Quat power plant in Quang Ngai province, in conjunction with the fifth Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park.

Singapore became the second largest investor in Vietnam in the first quarter of this year, with $911 million, according to official data. 

The city-state has poured a total of $39.26 billion into Vietnam as of March 2016, being the third-largest investor in the later, only after South Korea and Japan.

Tuan Minh / BizLIVE