With container traffic growing at 20 percent per year, cargo ships
often have to wait for a space among the limited berths. To reduce
congestion, the country is developing four new additional port
projects, the first of which is opening sometime next year.
So, besides fish, what's in all those shipping containers? Many of
those leaving the port are carrying rice.
Vietnam is the world's
second-largest exporter of rice (the predominant crop in nearly
every region) and this year possibly the largest single producer of
cashew nuts. The country also exports significant amounts of
pepper, coffee, tea, clothing, furniture,
oil, rubber, and
high-tech products.
"China tends to flood markets with [lower-end] goods, your
dollar-store variety, if you will. Vietnam has focused more on
niche areas that tend to be on the higher end," says Robert K.
Brigham, a Vietnam scholar and a professor of history and
international relations at Vassar College.
"Ford,
General Electric,
Nike, and other big U.S. manufacturing
concerns have joined European and Japanese and South Korean
companies in making Vietnam a high-end, high-tech manufacturer,"
Brigham adds. "Some of the more advanced technology plants in Asia
are now in Vietnam."
One such plant, currently under construction at Saigon Hi-Tech
Park, north of Ho Chi Minh City, is destined to be a whopper. Intel
has announced that it's investing $1 billion in the new
500,000-square-foot test-and-assembly chip facility, which will
eventually employ 4,000 people. Canon Electronics has embraced
Vietnam, too, and has built three manufacturing plants there,
including the world's largest ink-jet printer factory, capable of
producing four million printers a month.
All of this seems even more astonishing when you realize that in
1990, Vietnam was ranked one of the poorest countries in the
world.