Japanese giants to invest in VN

The industrial park with the total area of 270-hectare will be built in the suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, featuring a computer data centre, cloud computing services and cutting-edge sewage treatment facilities, the Japanese daily of Nihon Keizai reported.

Work on the construction of the park is slated to begin in January next year , and factories set up there are expected to come into usage around mid 2013.

Sojitz will take a 57.3 percent stake in the company undertaking the project. Daiwa House will have a 22 percent stake, and Kobe Steel's subsidiary, the Kobelco Eco-Solutions Co., will get an 8.7 percent share. The rest will be locally owned. Investment is estimated to total about 100 million USD, or around 7.7 billion yen.

Daiwa House Industry Co., Japan ’s biggest home builder, expects profit to rise to a record for the current year on higher sales following the nation’s biggest earthquake.

Operating profit, deducting the cost of goods sold from sales, will rise 8.3 percent to 95 billion yen ($1.19 billion) for the year ending March 2012, according to a statement distributed through the Tokyo Stock Exchange. That would exceed the previous high of 89.1 billion yen in the year ended March 2008. The forecast matched the median estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg News survey.

The Osaka-based builder, which earlier had postponed the profit forecast announcement because of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, may benefit from rebuilding demand following the temblor, analysts said. Its China operations may also gain as sales climb in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

According to Japanese media group Nikkei, the strengthening of the yen is forcing Japanese companies to shift production abroad. Sojitz and its partners expect more and more companies to choose Vietnam over China , because labor costs in China are on the rise.

In 2006, Daiwa Seiko ( a branch company of Daiwa ) built a large construction materials producing factory in the central province of Danang .