HCM City (VNA)🐬 - The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee is likely to approve a project to promote support industries next month, heard the "Vietnam - Japan Supporting Industry Forum".

Referring to the ‘Supporting Industry Development' project,' Nguyen Phuong Dong, deputy head of the city Industry and Trade Department, told the forum on January 19, "We will submit solutions and detailed plans to promote the industry soon." The project will seek to analyse the status of supporting industries in the textile-garment, footwear-leather, electronics-IT, automobile manufacturing and assembling, mechanical fabrication, and hi-tech sectors, and seek the best producers for making products for them. A HCM City Supporting Industry Development Centre would be established to support the industries, department officials said. The Government had, in a decree last November, announced the latest incentives for supporting industries. The income tax rate is now 10 percent for the first 15 years after initial waivers, import tax is waived on goods used to create fixed assets and the six supporting industries can pay value-added tax on revenues on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. Yasuzumi Hirotaka, head of the HCM City office of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) said that the city should set up a fund to provide low-interest credit for companies in the supporting industries. The city has set up a series of funds to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but most SMEs do not have assets to mortgage. "The city also has a fund SMEs can borrow from without a mortgage if they have good projects," Dong said. The Government has also mandate that SMEs in supporting industries can borrow up to 70 percent of their capital on the basis of guarantees provided by the Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs. The city is earmarking a 200ha area exclusively for supporting industries at the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park in Nha Be district. In mid-March a meeting of supporting industry companies in Vietnam, Japan and ASEAN will be held in HCM City.-VNA