Dung Quat continues to morphe

More giant investment projects are taking advantage of the zone’s charms

Quang Ngai provincial People’s Committee has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Construction to appraise the Dung Quat Economic Zone’s master plan  adjustment to 2025, before being submitted to the prime minister for approval.

According to this draft master plan, the zone will be changed into an industrial city combined with a national petrochemical centre.

People’s committee chairman Nguyen Xuan Hue said in reality the zone had been changed from an industrial zone into a special economic zone in 2005, with the focus to develop petrochemical and industrial development.

However, Hue said with an area of more than 45,000 hectares only the new form of a city would meet the management requirement.

“The regime will permit us to manage the zone in a different way to the current one, which is overlapping amongst local authorities,” Hue said.

He said there were many administrative bodies managing the zone, the Dung Quat Industrial Zone Management Board, people’s committees of local districts and communes and local administrative branches.

“The current regime is like a too tight shirt for a fast growing economic area and we need to find other regimes to fit it,” Hue said.

At present Dung Quat is a centre for industries such as  shipping building, steel manufacturing with the deep sea Dung Quat port, Chu Lai airport, Van Tuong Service and Industrial Urban Area and Doc Soi urban areas.

The newly built $3 billion Dung Quat refinery and its infrastructure has helped it become one of the top economic zones of the country.

The refinery was put into operation last year and has capacity of 6.5 million tonnes of products, to meet around 30 per cent of the country’s demand.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai earlier this month agreed to expand the refinery’s capacity to 10 million tonnes of products per year. Recently Japanese JX Holdings expressed its interest in taking part in the expansion.

The zone has attracted 111 projects with total registered capital of more than $7.6 billion. Hue said a suitable financial regime to improve economic and social infrastructure  and a better social welfare system could create sustainable development for the province.