Intel Corp, the world’s largest chip maker, is to more than treble its investment in building two plants in Vietnam to $1 billion, sources said.

The company’s Vietnam unit is building its first plant at Saigon’s High-Tech Park.
When licensed in February for an initial investment of $300 million, Intel’s project to package and test microchips that power personal computers and mobile phones was the biggest investment in Vietnam by a US company.
Vietnam, which has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies after China, became the newest member of the World Trade Organisation recently and many economic analysts expect investment to increase.
California-based Intel had an option to build a second phase for its plant that would double the investment to $605 million. “But now it wanted to bring the investment up to $1 billion in the second phase,” said the source.
In February, Intel Chairman Craig Barret said production at the Vietnam plant, its seventh in the world, would start in the second half of 2007.
Industry officials say the Intel project would help Vietnam draw foreign investors, including those in related businesses.  “The attraction of US group Intel to invest in the high-tech park,” the park’s board said in a statement, “immediately created an attractive force to many companies and partners to survey on investment opportunity at the park”.
Vietnam’s technology sector is relatively small, but the country has become the world’s top producer of robusta coffee and black pepper, the second-largest rice exporter and Southeast Asia’s third-biggest crude oil producer.