Quang Nam Province plans $3 billion small car factory

The central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam has asked the government for permission to build a US$3 billion automobile manufacturing center that can produce 300,000 vehicles a year.

The National Automobile Manufacturing Center will cover an area of around 1,000 hectares at the Chu Lai Open Economic Zone, said Le Minh Anh, chairman of the Quang Nam People’s Committee.

Anh said the center will focus on manufacturing environmentally friendly cars that have small capacity and are suited to Vietnamese conditions as well as that in other Southeast Asian nations.

The center will create 40,000 direct jobs and hundreds of thousands of jobs for suppliers, he said, noting that it will consume around $2 billion worth of materials per year.

According to the Quang Nam People’s Committee, South Korea's second largest car-maker Kia Motors has been chosen as the major investor for the project.

Vietnam, which has a population of about 86 million, is “one of the key global automotive markets,” Japanese automaker Nissan Motor had said in a statement released early this month.