Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker, started Wednesday construction of a chipset assembly and test facility with total investment of 1 billion U.S. dollars in southern Ho Chi Minh City, the first of its kind in Vietnam, according to local media on Thursday.

When completed (scheduled in mid-2009), the facility will be the seventh assembly site of Intel's global network, and is projected to eventually employ some 4,000 local people, and generate annual revenues of 5 billion dollars, said Youth newspaper.

Assembly and test facilities package chips that come from semiconductor fabrication plants. The assembly and test process can be broken down into three stages: packaging, testing and shipping.

Vietnam is fostering high technologies, including information technology, in a move to realize the target of basically becoming an industrial country by 2020.

Vietnam plans to have 38 million phone subscribers by the end of this year, or 43 units per 100 residents, up from 27.5 million subscribers by the end of last year. It also eyes 6 million Internet subscribers, by late 2007, up from over 4 million by late2006.

Vietnam earned nearly 1.8 billion dollars from exporting electronics goods, including computers, mainly to Japan and Southeast Asian countries, in 2006, up 24 percent against 2005, according to the country's General Statistics Office.