ill invest US$500 million in building a factory to produce computers and electronic components in Vietnam, a government official said. "The project, which was licensed yesterday, has its duration of 49 years and will create up to 40,000 jobs," Nguyen Ngoc Phi, chairman of the northern province of Vinh Phuc, said in a telephone interview. "The company said it may increase the investment after the first phase which is from 2007 to 2012." Construction of the Vietnamese factory will start at the end of the year and the facility is expected to begin operations in 2009, with initial capacity of 800,000 laptops a year, according to Phi.
"The capacity will be increased to as much as 24 million notebooks a year by 2012, and most of the products will be exported," he said.
