Vietnam Business Visits Day 2

On Friday we ventured outside of Ho Chi Minh City to the Binh Duong Province to visit Becamex and learn about the Binh Duong New City and industrial parks that are managed by Becamex. It was about an hour bus ride to the province from Ho Chi Minh City. Becamex is a state owned company and they are involved with the development of a new city complete with businesses, housing, entertainment, and education. They sell the land rites to various businesses and investors in the New City and other Industrial Parks. The state still owns the land but the businesses have basically leased the land and then the own the buildings on that land.


Presentation at Becamex


Becamex presented their plans to us during the morning presentation, what they are endeavoring to do is quite impressive. The plans that they shared looked almost the same as a US planned community. Following the presentation we got back in the bus to see the Industrial Parks and the initial phases of the New City.

There are a number of large businesses including Colgate-Palmolive and Miller Beer that are residents in the industrial park. The other phases are in the beginning stages of development, but what we saw was not quite what the presentation looked like. I think Becamex has an interesting plan for the region and if successful it will certainly help the Vietnamese economy.

Planned housing in the New City

Next stop was a group lunch hosted by Becamex. Several family style courses of local Vietnamese cuisine. By far, the best meal we have had here.



Coconut water at the group lunch



Our Becamex host making fish wraps for us





Our next stop in the My Phuoc Industrial Park was probably one of the most inspiring since we have been here. We visited the Acrylic Idea Factory, a small factory that manufactures acrylic statues and awards. The director of the factory gave us a tour of the facility but before that he talked about his experience at the factory and the success that they have achieved. When he was describing their success with one of their US customers he had tears in his eyes and was so incredibly proud of their achievements. This sense of pride has been consistent with almost all of the Vietnamese people that we have met on this trip. It will be interesting to see if this is true of the Chinese people as well.





Acrylic Idea Factory

Our next stop was the SAP Miller Beer Factory, a much larger manufacturing operation. I was really looking forward to this visit and was a little disappointed. Our host was not nearly as enthusiastic as our previous host and although it was an impressive operation it was unbearably hot and very difficult to hear the description of the operations. Having been on other brewery tours in the past, this one did not really meet expectations. Miller Beer in Vietnam has had their share of challenges since the beers that they sell are way behind their competition, Saigon Beer domestically and Heineken imported. We did finally get to take our full class picture in front of the case of all of the Miller Beer, which was the highlight of this visit.


Rider EMBA Class of 2012

Our final stop in the New City was the newly formed Eastern International University, a key component to the development plans of the New City. The inaugural class will be starting classes this fall in either business, engineering, or nursing. The hope is that the university will help attract people to the area, that they will study there and then live there after they have finished school. This will be key to the economic development of the area. Eventually they hope to have 24,000 students enrolled in the university. It is likely that the enrolling class of 2015 will be about 1000. Some of the facilities are still under construction but what we saw was impressive. 



A long day of visits but another informative day with a glimpse into the future potential for Vietnam. Tomorrow we spend time with the Dong Thap University students who have been working the last year on a microcredit project.