Hitachi secures infrastructure foothold in Vietnam

Established with initial capital of approximately $500,000, Hitachi Asia (Vietnam) Co Ltd will also help its parent company penetrate deeper into infrastructure, power systems and IT systems firms in Viet Nam.

"Viet Nam's economic growth provides plenty of business opportunities for Hitachi to fulfil the market demand for social infrastructure products, services and solutions," said Yukio Toyoshima, managing director of Hitachi Asia Ltd.

The Tokyo-based company entered into a 37 billion yen ($376 million) contract with the Management Authority for HCM City's Urban Railways in June to construct Viet Nam's first urban railway in the southern city.

Hitachi is to deliver subsystems including 17 train sets with a total of 51 carriages, a signalling system, a telecommunications system including wireless train radio and a power supply system, as well as platform screen doors, an automatic fare collection system and depot facilities.

It is also scheduled to undertake five years' maintenance work after the start of commercial operations, with details due to be stipulated in a separate agreement.

The new urban railway is scheduled to begin operations in early 2018.

Over recent years, Vietnam has attracted a raft of foreign direct investment (FDI) and Official Development Assistance (ODA) from overseas, with Japan accounting for a sizeable proportion of both FDI and ODA to the country.

Of the total $13 billion FDI in Viet Nam last year, $5.1 billion was from Japan, representing 40 per cent of total FDI. Meanwhile, the total committed 2012 Japanese ODA to Viet Nam was 286 billion yen (more than $ 2.9 billion).

Hitachi is a leading global electronics company with approximately 326,000 employees worldwide. The company's consolidated revenues for the fiscal year 2012 (ended March 31, 2013) totalled 9,041 billion yen ($96.1 billion).