Vietnam Builds Big Steel Plant

Vietnam builds big steel plant

HANOI, April 28 (Xinhua) — Construction of an iron and steel plant with an annual capacity of one million tons have been started in Vietnam’s northern Lao Cai province, local newspaper People reported Monday.

The Vietnam-China Minerals and Metallurgy Company, a joint venture between the Vietnam Steel Corporation, the Lao Cai Minerals Company, and China’s Kunming Iron and Steel Company, started to build the 152-million U.S. dollar plant in Ba Thang district on Sunday.

The plant will use materials tapped from iron Quy Sa mine with reserve of 120 million tons for production, after it comes into operation scheduled in 2010.

Vietnam imported over 3.4 million tons of steel billets and finished products worth more than 2.4 billion dollars in the first quarter of this year, posting respective year-on-year surges of 110.7 percent and 161.9 percent, according to the country’s General Statistics Office.

The country imported over 7.7 million tons of steel billets and finished steel products totaling nearly 4.9 billion dollars, mainly from China, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore in 2007, up 35 percent and 66.2 percent, respectively.

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