Heavy industry urged to restructure

The machinery sector needs to restructure itself in a strong manner to better participate in the international mechanical engineering chain.

This was the message from Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai during a conference discussing the machinery sector’s capacity of fabricating support devices for the energy industry, held here on Monday.

The event was co-organised by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Alstom group of Switzerland.

Hai outlined, the lack of collaboration between enterprises and their weak capacities in researching, manufacturing and product design as reasons that hindered the sector’s development.

As a result, the sector is only capable of meeting 38 per cent of domestic demand for mechanical equipment, leaving the remaining 62 per cent to foreign producers.

The Deputy PM said he believed that the symposium was the first step in helping to bring together the ministry and the firms and their associates to re-examine their infrastructure in order to provide an optimal service for the Alstom group.

He affirmed that he was willing to communicate directly with businesses and their associations, to deal with difficulties that might arise in order to promote the development and international integration of the nation’s machinery industry.

Alstom Asian Director Laurent Fortier-Beaulieu said his group was ready to co-operate with Vietnamese mechanical engineering businesses. This co-operation would include producing equipment and providing labourers and maintenance services for hydro-electric, wind-generated, and thermo-electric power plants with a capacity of up to 600MW. The company has already established similar relationship in other countries including Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia.

Last year, the Vietnamese mechanical industry exported US$2 billion in goods – a big step, but still far behind other regional countries.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

Tags: Vietnam industry