Recently, Samsung Electronics announced that it will significantly increase the size of its annual investment in Vietnam, with plans to boost investment by up to $1 billion. Last week, Samsung Electronics CFO Park Han-soo met with Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Minh Triet to reach a handshake on the latest financial agreement. In the meeting, Pham Minh Thanh emphasized the Vietnamese government's support for foreign-funded enterprises and expects Samsung to continue to deepen cooperation with Vietnam, driving more local companies to join its supply chain.
As early as 2008, Samsung invested in the construction of Samsung Electronics (Vietnam) Plant No. 1 in Bac Ninh Province, thereby laying a “beachhead” for business in Vietnam. Thereafter, Samsung established the No. 2 plant in Taiyuan Province, and since then in Vietnam “firmly established”. Later, Samsung also ventured into other electronic products such as TVs, chips, monitors, etc., and the scale of its investment and operation in Vietnam continued to expand.
By 2014, Samsung has become the largest foreign investor in Vietnam. Of the 150,000 employees engaged in information technology and mobile communications business operations in Vietnam in 2016, about 130,000 were Samsung employees, accounting for 86.6% of the total. This shows the scale of Samsung's share in Vietnam's electronics industry sector. By the end of 2018, Samsung's cumulative investment in Vietnam had reached US$17 billion.
Currently, about half of the world's Galaxy phones are produced in Vietnam, which has become the core area of Samsung's smartphone manufacturing business. It is understood that since building a factory in Vietnam in 2008, Samsung has raised its total investment in the country to $22.4 billion. This additional $1 billion annual investment will undoubtedly accelerate Samsung's business expansion in Vietnam. Currently, Samsung operates six factories, one sales legal entity, and one R&D center in Vietnam, creating a large number of jobs in the country.
Samsung's investment in Vietnam covers a wide range of areas such as electronics manufacturing, semiconductor and chip manufacturing, display manufacturing, battery manufacturing, and hardware assembly and processing. Among them, the Thai An and Bac Ninh factories in northern Vietnam and the Jai Tong factory in Ho Chi Minh City are Samsung's key production bases in Vietnam, focusing on the production of smartphones, tablets and other electronic products.