By PNA and U.S. News Agency / Asian

Investors in high-tech fields are planning to build factories in this city’s neighboring provinces as available land in the city for industrial plants shrinks.

Osamu Kawakami, general director of Nidec Tosok Precision, said his company wanted to do business in the city but was finding it difficult to find enough land to build factories.

On a recent tour of industrial and export processing zones inside the city, his staff could not find available land for new factories.

So the company will build a plant in nearby Ben Tre Province, even though transport and production fees will be much higher than those in HCM City, according to Kawakami.

Here, there is no more land for new industrial parks, while existing ones are fully occupied.

High-tech parks in District 9 and Thu Duc District are all full.

As the amount of land has decreased, Ben Tre and Tien Giang provinces have become ideal destinations for investors.

Nguyen Thi Minh Thu, head of the Saigon Hi-Tech Park’s investment promotion and international relations division, said the park was given 913 ha of land by the city’s People’s Committee, with the first phase of development ending in 2010.

Local and foreign investors set up factories during the first phase, covering 90 percent of the land area of 300 ha.

The park’s second period of development began this year and is to end in 2015. The remaining 613 ha will be occupied by new investors by the end of 2013.

As of this September, it has attracted 29 projects, including four construction projects.

Another 13 projects have received land but have yet to begin operations. Most of the projects are owned by domestic investors, who do not have enough capital to continue. Three of the 13 projects may have their licenses revoked, according to city officials.

Many investors prefer to set up shop in the city because of its natural advantages and international-standard infrastructure.

Nguyen Tan Phuoc, deputy head of the city’s Export Processing Zone and Industrial Zone Authority’s managing board, said the Tan Than Export Processing Zone was building factories on 38ha in order to meet demand of investors in hi-tech fields.