The Vietnamese government has recently approved the establishment of five industrial parks (IPs) and expansion of two existing ones, a local agency told Xinhua on Friday.

The five future IPs include 327-ha Ba Thien in northern Vinh Phuc province, 105-ha Thanh An in northern Nam Dinh province, 256- ha Thanh Duc and 142-ha Long Hau in southern Long An province, and 370-ha Phuoc Nam in southern Ninh Thuan province, and the two existing parks are located in northern Hai Duong province and southern Dong Nai province, said the IPs and Export Processing Zones (EPZs) Management Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

First IPs and EPZs in Vietnam, built in 1991, were opened for some certain sectors, but newer ones will attract both domestic and foreign enterprises operating in various fields, the department said, noting that in the coming years, some IPs and EPZs will have additional functions as tourism and urban areas.

By the end of 2005, there have been 130 IPs and EPZs with total land areas of 26,517 ha in 45 cities and provinces of Vietnam, luring 2,202 foreign-invested projects worth 17.5 billion U.S. dollars and 2,314 domestic projects with combined registered capital of 103 trillion Vietnamese dong (nearly 6.5 billion dollars), the department said.

Last year, enterprises in the IPs and EPZs generated 28 percent of Vietnam's total industrial production value, contributed over 650 million dollars in taxes to the state budget, and employed some 740,000 direct workers and over one million indirect ones.

Source: Xinhua