${bigcity_Ho_Chi_Minh_City:”Ho Chi Minh City”} People's Committee has recently approved a proposal to set up HCMC Technology and Science Park, the city's second high-tech park in District 9, following the success of the first one. The first high-tech park in HCMC, Saigon Hi-tech Park (SHTP), was given the green light to set up on an area of 913 hectares in District 9 by the prime minister in 2002.

The authorities of SHTP has granted the licenses for 9 new projects with chartered capital of $151.8 million this year, up 86.7 percent year on year and exceeding the whole year’s target.

SHTP has attracted 55 projects with a total pledged capital of over $2 billion, of which as many as 24 out of 55 projects have been operational with an occupancy ratio of 95 percent out of 300 hectares of land set aside for the first phase of development.

Among them were 26 foreign-invested projects with registered capital of $1.65 billion, of which the disbursement rate has reached $589.7 million. Some $248 million, or over 42 percent of the disbursed capitals, came from the $1.2 billion project of the US-based Intel Corp.

SHTP, which offers jobs for 16,000 laborers, has so far created some $1.44 billion worth of goods and services, of which $1.42 billion are for export.