Van Phong Economic Zone

Establishment and boundaries

The Prime Minister, Phan Văn Khải, signed Decision 92/2006/QĐ-TTg on 25 April 2006, establishing Van Phong Economic Zone around Van Phong Bay^[1][2]. It followed an earlier plan, Decision 51/2005/QĐ-TTg of 11 March 2005, in which the Prime Minister had approved developing the bay into an economic centre with a fuel depot and a large container yard by 2020^[3].

The 2006 decision put the zone's area at about 150,000 hectares, comprising roughly 70,000 hectares of land and 80,000 hectares of water, bordered by Tuy Hòa district of Phú Yên province to the north, Hòn Heo to the south, the East Sea to the east and mountainous communes of Vạn Ninh and Ninh Hòa to the west^[1][2]. Wikidata places the zone at latitude 12.7107 and longitude 109.3813^[12].

The container transhipment port

The idea of a container transhipment port at Van Phong was first put forward in 1997 by Doãn Mạnh Dũng, an engineer with the Ho Chi Minh City Marine Science and Technology Association, at a tourism-planning workshop in Nha Trang^[3]. The government later designated Van Phong a first-class national gateway port under Decision 2190/QĐ-TTg of 24 December 2009, part of a port-system master plan running to 2020 with a vision to 2030^[3].

Construction of a startup-phase project began on 31 October 2009 under Vinalines, the state shipping corporation, which raised more than 4,000 billion đồng from its own profits, financial restructuring and bank loans^[3]. The full project was designed for 750 hectares, 37 berths and about 12,564 metres of total berth length, with a design capacity of about 17.5 million TEU a year and a total investment of 3.6 billion US dollars across all phases; the startup phase alone was to provide two berths of 690 metres for ships of up to 9,000 TEU^[13].

The government ordered the startup-phase project stopped in principle on 4 September 2012, conveying a decision by Deputy Prime Minister Hoàng Trung Hải^[4]. Vinalines had planned for vessels of 6,000 to 9,000 TEU, a scale the newspaper Công an Nhân dân reported had already been overtaken by a global shift to ships of 11,000 to 15,000 TEU, leaving the project uncompetitive against Cái Mép-Thị Vải and other established ports; the same report cited Vinalines' inability to attract international shipping lines and the absence of the economic recovery and industrial linkages the project depended on^[4].

The Nam Van Phong refinery

A second large project that did not proceed was an oil refinery and petrochemical complex at Nam Vân Phong. The government approved it in principle in 2008 at an estimated cost of 4.4 to 4.8 billion US dollars, for a plant designed to process 200,000 barrels a day, about 10 million tonnes a year, on 300 hectares of land and 300 hectares of sea surface; construction was planned to start in 2011 and production in late 2013^[5].

Petrolimex, Vietnam's state fuel distributor, pursued the project with the Japanese company then known as Nippon Oil and Energy, later Eneos, which bought an 8 percent stake in Petrolimex in 2016 for about 20 billion yen, roughly 186 million US dollars at the time^[5]. The refinery still did not advance, and in September 2018 Petrolimex asked a government task force to let it drop the project, arguing that the existing Dung Quất and Nghi Sơn refineries already met 70 to 80 percent of domestic fuel demand and that tax incentives once offered to refineries no longer applied^[5]. Petrolimex proposed converting the site to a liquefied natural gas terminal and, with Electricity of Vietnam, a gas-fired power plant, at a planned cost of about 700 million US dollars from 2021 to 2025^[5].

Adjusted master plans

The Prime Minister adjusted the zone's master plan twice after 2006. Deputy Prime Minister Hoàng Trung Hải signed the first adjustment, Decision 380/QĐ-TTg, on 17 March 2014, revising the plan to a 2030 horizon^[6]. Deputy Prime Minister Trần Hồng Hà signed a further adjustment, Decision 298/QĐ-TTg, on 27 March 2023, extending the horizon to 2040 with a vision to 2050 and restating the area at about 150,000 hectares, comprising about 70,822 hectares of land and islands and 79,178 hectares of water, across communes of Vạn Ninh district and the eastern and northern parts of Ninh Hòa town^[7].

The 2023 plan divided the zone into 19 functional sub-zones, 13 in a northern group in Vạn Ninh and 6 in a southern group in Ninh Hòa, including a port, urban and resort centre of about 4,127 hectares at Đầm Môn and an industrial and port zone of about 6,987 hectares in the south^[8]. A local adjustment followed on 27 February 2026, when the Khánh Hòa People's Committee issued Decision 660/QĐ-UBND, reworking about 327 hectares of one sub-zone for the Ninh Thọ industrial park and raising the zone's total planned industrial land from 2,969 to 3,287 hectares^[14].

Administration

Van Phong Economic Zone was originally overseen by its own Management Board of Van Phong Economic Zone, headed in 2018 by Hoàng Đình Phi^[15]. Effective 21 July 2025, the Prime Minister merged that board with the Management Board of Industrial Zones of the former Ninh Thuận province, under Decision 1570/QĐ-TTg, to form the Management Board of Economic Zones and Industrial Zones of Khánh Hòa province, a state agency reporting to the provincial People's Committee^[11]. Trần Minh Chiến headed the merged board as of 2026^[16].

Investment

By mid-2025 the zone had attracted 155 investment projects, 131 domestic and 24 foreign-invested, with registered capital of about 5.4 billion US dollars; 106 projects were operating, with realised capital of about 3.3 billion US dollars, or 61 percent of the registered amount^[9][10]. The largest single investment in operation was the Vân Phong 1 build-operate-transfer thermal power plant, led by the Japanese trading house Sumitomo, with a capacity of 1,320 megawatts, a cost of about 2.58 billion US dollars and commercial operation from January 2024^[9]. Other named projects include the HD Hyundai Vietnam shipyard, at about 350 million US dollars, and the aquaculture venture Australis Vietnam, at about 68.19 million US dollars^[9].

In June 2025 the Prime Minister approved two new urban projects inside the zone, Tu Bông and Đầm Môn, together covering about 4,019 hectares^[9][17]. Their combined planned investment was put at about 65,000 billion đồng by VietnamPlus in 2025 and at 65,308 billion đồng in 2026 reporting^[9][17], while Báo Khánh Hòa in 2025 gave the two separately, about 43,000 billion đồng for Tu Bông and about 25,645 billion đồng for Đầm Môn, which add to 68,645 billion đồng^[10]. Newly registered capital rose sharply in 2025: the management board signed 24 new investment projects and adjusted 8 more during the year for registered capital of about 90,737 billion đồng, about nine times the 2024 figure, and by the end of 2025 the zone and the province's industrial parks together counted 193 operating projects with reported annual revenue of about 2.3 billion US dollars^[17].

For 2026 the management board set a target of at least 230,000 billion đồng in newly registered capital and 1,500 hectares of new industrial land, including the Ninh An and Vạn Lương industrial parks^[17]. The provincial Party Committee's Resolution 16-NQ/TU, with an implementation plan dated 10 June 2026, set the zone's development orientation for 2026 to 2030 with a vision to 2045^[16].