A private Vietnamese conglomerate, who provide a comprehensive ecosystem of businesses addressing all customer needs from technology to real estate, retail and services from health care, education and hospitality, is planning to build up a new smart urban park city offering top quality facilities for living, working, shopping, healthcare, entertainment and education in Ho Chi Minh City. The planned location is approximately 10km (6.2 miles) from Tan Son Nhat international airport, and 19km (11.8 miles) from the city centre. As an integral part of the ecosystem of this area, they are planning to build a university campus which can cater for 1,000 students.

They are now looking for a UK university partner who is in the global top 300 universities and who might be interested in working in colloboration with them for an international branch campus (IBC) in this area.

The conglomerate is ready to discuss a land lot within the project to build a campus which is an integral part of the state-of-the-art education hub in the area, a favourable discount on working offices, and financial support for cost of construction and installation of infrastructure. They are also ready to support professors, scientists, and researchers to join their global academic network through collaborative opportunities, their own research funding, etc.

For more information on the current context in Viet Nam in welcoming international branch campus, please kindly refer to:

• Report ‘Viet Nam: Towards a new international education hub in Southeast Asia. Lessons and Evidence. Considerations for UK stakeholders’.
• Viet Nam encouraging more TNE partnerships and IBCs https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/news/viet-nam-encouraging-more-tne-partnerships-and-ibcs.
• Amendments of the Decree 86 on foreign cooperation and investment in education, with some highlights on foreign investment as in the new Decree 124/2024/ND-CP dated 5 October 2024 as attached, which will be effective from 20 November 2024.

British Embassy and the British Council in Viet Nam are happy to connect and facilitate engagement for UK universities who are interested in this initiative.