Intel to pour more investment in Vietnam

The year 2022 has affirmed the importance of Vietnam to the US semiconductor giant and vice versa, he said, adding that these performance and efficiency results underpin the need to inject more capital into the Southeast Asian country.

By the end of 2021, the Intel Corporation had injected a total of US$1.5 billion in Vietnam and it wants to keep investing and that is certainly what Intel will do, he said.

Intel Products Vietnam (IPV) is now the largest of the four factories in terms of assembly and testing, he noted.

Regarding the possibility that IPV will be upgraded to participate in more stages of the chip production process, he said that their current plan is to focus on packaging and testing.

Currently, the Vietnamese factory is manufacturing the 13th generation processor Raptor Lake and the next generation Meteor Lake which accounts for more than 50% of global production for assembly and testing, Kim said, adding that this is a very significant figure.

According to him, the role of packaging and testing should not be underestimated. Compared to the previous generation, the production process of Meteor Lake processor is much more complicated.

Kim recalled that 17 years ago, the Vietnamese government, or more specifically leaders of Ho Chi Minh City, had a very good vision of the future by persuading Intel to come and invest here.

The corporation is the first high-tech investor in Vietnam and the government has helped and supported a lot in the administrative process. Intel's presence has also helped Vietnam attract more high-tech investors over the past 17 years, he said.

With such a complex model and new version of the Meteor Lake chip, the assembly and testing process is also more complicated, Kim said, noting that technology relating to these processes needs to be continuously upgraded.

To attract more investors, it is necessary for the Vietnamese government to review the current business support programmes, especially the preferential tax rates, he said, elaborating that other countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are making similar moves.

These countries and Vietnam have focused on using corporate income tax programmes to support and attract investors. He cited the US and European chip laws that have been approved as typical examples.

The modernisation of incentive programmes to support businesses will be an essential action that the Government of Vietnam needs to adopt to assist businesses, along with the advantages of labour costs and political stability.

According to Kim, the number of foreign companies in the Southeast Asian country will increase in the future. He also highlighted the necessity of solving such problems as government incentives and streamlining administrative procedures. The current model that businesses are moving towards must be resilient and geographically balanced, he added.