The Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority has proposed developing 11 more industrial parks covering a total area of over 4,120 hectares of land, heard a press briefing in the city on Wednesday.

The dearth of land banks inside industrial parks has been a matter of concern in Ho Chi Minh City for years.

Nguyen Thanh Binh, head of HEPZA’s planning and construction unit, said the city currently has some 5,900 hectares of land planned for industrial activities.

It is needed to expand the land banks for industrial development in the new era and maintain the city’s leading role in sustainable economic development.

HEPZA has coordinated with local departments, agencies, and districts to identify land lots and transform ineffectively-exploited agricultural land into industrial land, Binh added.

According to Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, head of HEPZA’s investment management unit, there is still available land in industrial parks, but attracting investment is challenging because of the small size of the land parcels.

Ho Chi Minh City is giving priority to green transition and digital transformation projects, while investors in these projects need large land plots to develop infrastructure, Ngoc noted.

Tran Viet Ha, deputy head of HEPZA, noted that new investment projects, including small FDI projects, in the first half of this year utilized only five hectares of land, significantly below the annual allocation of 100-150 hectares for such projects.

Ha added that the city aims to attract projects requiring large land banks, but local industrial parks currently do not meet this demand.

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