Dong Nai has long been anchored as Vietnam’s powerhouse "capital" for industrial crops and fruit trees, leading the nation in terms of acreage, output, and economic value. Following its official transition to city status, backed by an influx of tailored policies and robust agricultural infrastructure upgrades, Dong Nai has increasingly cemented its position as an attractive destination for major corporate players and institutional investors.

This fresh wave of investment is highly anticipated to catalyze a powerful leap forward for the young city, accelerating its target of developing a green, modern, and high-tech agricultural sector.

A Fresh Wave of Capital Inflow

A vital competitive edge for Dong Nai lies in its master-planned master zones. The city’s core crops have already transitioned into specialized, large-scale farming clusters tailored for high-value export commodities that align with local natural conditions. To date, the municipality has established over 300 concentrated production zones. Consequently, despite its heavy industrial footprint, Dong Nai remains a top-tier hub for agricultural investors.

Mr. Nguyen Nam Tu, Director of S.VN Investment Group Joint Stock Company (headquartered in Hanoi), noted: "Dong Nai is a massive and diverse sourcing hub for agricultural commodities, industrial crops, and fresh produce. Recognizing this, our company acted as a strategic bridge to bring a delegation of Chinese investors to the Agricultural Sourcing Conference, organized by local authorities during the Golden Cashew Festival 2026. This delegation included top-tier Chinese e-commerce giants and a major petroleum conglomerate featuring an extensive convenience store and highway service station network that distributes diverse consumer goods and agricultural products. They came to Dong Nai scanning for partnerships and raw import opportunities for fresh fruits. We have successfully signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with local cooperatives and enterprises to ramp up agricultural exports to international markets, specifically targeting West Asia, Central Asia, and Russia, with a particular focus on cashew products."

Mr. Tu further disclosed that within this week, his firm is scheduled to export its first 15 containers of durians from Dong Nai’s northern cultivation zones into the Chinese market. In light of recent cadmium contamination issues affecting fruit crops in the Mekong Delta, agricultural exporters, particularly fruit traders, are pivoting their supply chains toward the Central Highlands and the Southeast region, including Dong Nai. To capture this massive windfall opportunity, the Dong Nai administration must leverage its geographic logistics to expedite the issuance of Production Unit Codes (PUCs), export packaging facility registrations, and agricultural traceability systems to solidify its status as a premier export-grade raw material hub.

Attending the Bananas Export Launch and Agricultural Trade Promotion Ceremony in early April 2026, Mr. Le Viet Binh, Deputy Chief of the Southern Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, emphasized: "Fruit and vegetable exports serve as a primary growth engine for the nation's broader agriculture, forestry, and fishery export turnover. In this arena, Dong Nai is a pioneer in commercialized farming, with numerous industrial crops and fresh fruits already penetrating major global markets. The city's aggressive push to map out cultivation area codes, attract investment into packaging infrastructure, and enforce rigorous quality control is vastly enhancing local competitiveness, systematically aligning the region with strict international standards."

Optimizing the Investment Climate Through Policy Mechanisms

Following Dong Nai's upgrade to city status, the business community harbors high expectations that the local government will heavily invest in upgrading agricultural infrastructure. Key priorities include perfecting the transport network to facilitate seamless container freight logistics for exports, alongside grid infrastructure enhancements to power downstream sorting, packing, and deep processing operations.

Dong Nai boasts over 513,000 hectares of perennial industrial crops and nearly 100,000 hectares of fruit orchards. Its export-advantaged strategic crops rank among the highest nationwide in land area, featuring over 176,000 hectares of cashews, over 23,000 hectares of durians, and more than 20,000 hectares of bananas.

Ms. Lieu A Kieu, Director of Kelly Swangle International Co., Ltd. (Ho Chi Minh City), commented: "Dong Nai is currently the nation's undisputed 'capital' for export-grade bananas, and its certified cultivation acreage is expanding rapidly. Local farmers possess seasoned expertise in intensive cultivation. Our company plans to focus heavily on this massive specialized zone by expanding hundreds of hectares of banana crops integrated with certified cultivation area codes. The quality of Vietnamese bananas in general, and Dong Nai’s in particular, is increasingly aligning with international demand, successfully entering high-barrier, premium markets. Beyond raw material sourcing, we intend to invest in large-scale, technologically advanced sorting and packaging facilities directly at the farming sites. We hope the newly designated Dong Nai City will prioritize zoning these specialized export clusters in tandem with packing facility infrastructure, creating a friction-free environment for enterprises to commit to long-term, large-scale capital investments."

Echoing this sentiment, Mr. Vu Thai Son, Chairman of the Dong Nai Cashew Association, stated: "Dong Nai is simultaneously the country's 'capital' for both cashew cultivation and cashew processing. The fundamental bottleneck for the cashew industry currently is its heavy reliance on imported raw materials. The most sustainable antidote is the development of high-yield, specialized cashew cultivation zones. Furthermore, major cashew-producing localities must focus on establishing geographical indications (GI) and origin certifications for these specialized zones. On the administrative front, customs clearance, export documentation, phytosanitary inspections, VAT tax refunds, and import procedures for advanced processing machinery need to be streamlined and expedited to minimize operational friction."

Bình Nguyên

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/