Samsung wins license to invest $3 billion in Vietnam mobile phone plant

South Korea’s Samsung has secured a licence to invest $3 billion to expand its production in northern Vietnam, the Vietnamese government said. The licence was awarded on Nov. 17 in Thai Nguyen province, where Samsung has been operating a $2 billion smartphone plant, the government said in a statement issued late on Monday, without giving further details of the project. Samsung has said it plans to invest up to $3 billion for its handset business in Vietnam as part of its strategy to cut costs and better compete with Chinese rivals. It was reported earlier that Samsung was **awarded a license** to invest $3 billion in Vietnam mobile phone plant. The facility was to be built in Thai Nguyen province, where Samsung Electronics Vietnam has operated a $2 billion plant for mobile phone production since March 2014, the Planning and Investment Ministry-run Dau Tu newspaper said. Earlier last year, Samsung had **invested $1.7 billion in Shanghai-based plant** . The company is already building a $7 billion chip complex in Xi’an, an industrial city in northwestern China. The Kunshan investment will be used to build workshops, purchase equipment and set up research institutes operated by Samsung, to support a chip carrier related project. With inputs from Reuters