Inside the fence of a modern industrial park sits a miniature ‘utility city’: substations and a distribution grid, a water supply plant, a centralised wastewater treatment station, internal roads and fire systems. In Vietnam this whole system is mostly funded and operated by private infrastructure investors under the industrial park management framework, not under a general PPP model. This article analyses that cooperation model: how the infrastructure investor invests and recovers capital, how power, water and wastewater are organised under sector law, and which infrastructure clauses a secondary land-leasing enterprise must lock into its own contracts.
The cooperation model: infrastructure investor and secondary enterprises
The base framework is Decree 35/2022/ND-CP on industrial park and economic zone management: the enterprise investing in construction and business of industrial park infrastructure — the infrastructure investor — leases land from the State to build the shared technical infrastructure system, then subleases serviced land to secondary enterprises for their factories. The infrastructure investor’s revenue comes from land sublease rents, infrastructure usage fees, management fees and in-park utility services; this is a pure private infrastructure business model inside a specially planned and managed zone, run through civil contracts with each secondary enterprise.
Cooperation can go one layer deeper: the main infrastructure investor may partner with sector investors for individual systems — a power partner, a water partner — under business cooperation contracts or subleased operating rights for that system inside the park. Whatever the structure, ultimate responsibility to the park management board and to secondary enterprises for infrastructure continuity and quality remains anchored on the infrastructure investor who signed the land sublease, unless a tripartite contract clearly allocates it to the sector operator.
Power supply inside the park: retail electricity at the zone
Power for secondary enterprises usually arrives in two layers: the power utility sells electricity to the park at the master connection point, and the in-park retail unit — typically the infrastructure investor or its organised power company — redistributes to each factory under Electricity Law 61/2024/QH15 on retail electricity activity. The retail price applies the tariff schedule issued by the competent authority for each production customer group, plus the park’s power infrastructure service fee under contract — this add-on fee is what secondary enterprises must read closely, because it sits outside the national tariff.
Power quality issues — voltage stability, outages, backup capacity for sensitive lines — are not solved by the tariff but by service clauses in the supply contract with the in-park unit: commitment levels, maintenance outage notices, and compensation for supplier-side incidents. A factory whose line cannot tolerate sudden outages must invest in its own backup power system and agree source-switching procedures, rather than expecting the park grid to guarantee absoluteness as a default legal commitment.
Water supply and wastewater: two ends of one service contract
Clean water for the park is supplied by the infrastructure investor’s water unit or the regional water company, with water quality per clean water standards and pricing per the local price frame plus the park’s infrastructure fee. At the output end, each factory’s wastewater must be pre-treated to the park’s connection standards before discharge into the collection system running to the central treatment station; the central station treats to environmental standards before discharge to the receiving source under the park’s environmental licence.
Wastewater treatment fees are charged per flow and pollution level of incoming wastewater under the treatment service contract — a factory with highly polluted wastewater pays far more than one with only domestic wastewater. Automatic monitoring at the factory connection point and at the central station outlet generates the data for both fee collection and environmental compliance; a secondary enterprise repeatedly breaching connection standards can have its wastewater acceptance suspended, meaning the production line must stop — the strongest operating sanction in the park, to be anticipated in production planning.
Secondary enterprises: locking infrastructure clauses into the sublease
A secondary enterprise’s land sublease and infrastructure use contract should lock four clause groups: one, the full fee schedule — land rent, infrastructure fee, management fee, power, water, wastewater — with the fee adjustment mechanism over time to avoid unbudgeted new fees; two, service standards and committed power and water supply capacity meeting registered production needs, including upon expansion; three, liability when infrastructure fails — restoration times, temporary support, fee relief for interruption periods; four, conditions where the park changes infrastructure investor or utility operator — the secondary enterprise’s rights and duties are inherited unchanged.
Before signing, the enterprise should also verify: the whole park’s environmental licence is valid and still has receiving capacity for its industry; the spare capacity of the substation and wastewater station; and whether the park’s expansion plan touches the intended plot. These three verifications belong to infrastructure diligence — the diligence many investors skip while focusing on land rent, while a factory’s twenty-year operating risk sits almost entirely there.
Frequently asked questions
Under what model do industrial park infrastructure projects cooperate with private infrastructure investors?
Under Decree 35/2022/ND-CP, the model is that an enterprise investing in construction and business of industrial park infrastructure leases State land, invests its own capital in the shared technical infrastructure system, then subleases serviced land to secondary enterprises and supplies utility services to recover capital through land rent, infrastructure fees and service charges. The infrastructure investor may partner further with sector investors for power and water systems, but infrastructure responsibility to secondary enterprises remains anchored on the main infrastructure investor under the sublease.
How is power and water supply for an industrial park invested by a private infrastructure investor?
Power runs in two layers: the utility sells electricity at the park’s connection point, and the in-park retail unit — usually the infrastructure investor or its organised unit — distributes to each factory under Electricity Law 61/2024, priced as the retail tariff schedule by customer group plus the park’s power infrastructure service fee. Water is supplied by the infrastructure investor’s water unit or the regional water company per clean water standards and the local price frame, plus the park’s infrastructure fee under contract.
What must secondary enterprises in an industrial park watch regarding shared infrastructure?
The three biggest watch-outs: the full infrastructure fee schedule and its adjustment mechanism across the lease term must be locked in the sublease to avoid unbudgeted fees; spare power and water supply capacity and wastewater treatment headroom must be verified against the factory’s production and expansion needs, with the park’s environmental licence in force; and the liability clauses for infrastructure failure or a change of the park’s infrastructure investor, because a utility interruption inside the park can stop the entire production line.
A secondary enterprise buys infrastructure as a twenty-year operating promise: does the substation still have capacity, does the wastewater station still have headroom, is the fee schedule locked. Those three questions, answered in writing before the sublease is signed, are worth more than any first-year land rent discount clause.
