Qui Nhơn is a coastal city in Bình Định Province in central Vietnam. It is composed of 16 wards and five communes with a total of 284 km² (110 sq mi). Quy Nhơn is the capital of Bình Định Province. Its population is at 311,000. Historically, the commercial activities of the city focused on agriculture and fishing. In recent years, however, there has been a significant shift towards service industries and tourism. There is also a substantial manufacturing sector.
The town of Quy Nhơn was officially founded in the late 18th century, although its origins stretch back much further to the 11th-century Champa culture, the Tây Sơn dynasty and the 18th century seaport of Thị Nại. During the 1620s the town was host to Portuguese Jesuits who called the place Pulo Cambi. During the Ming treasure voyages of the 15th century, the Chinese fleet led by Admiral Zheng He would always make port at Qui Nhơn in Champa as their first destination after leaving China. The city is renowned as the birthplace of 18th century Vietnamese emperor Nguyễn Huệ and, more recently, had a large American military presence during the Vietnam War. Today the city is recognized as a first class city with a geo-economic priority and an urbanized infrastructure. The government describes it as one of the three commercial and tourism centres of the central southern coastal region (with Đà Nẵng and Nha Trang).
Quy Nhơn has a varied topography, being extremely diversified with mountains and forests, hills, fields, salt marshes, plains, lagoons, lakes, rivers, shorelines, peninsulas and islands. Its coastline is 42 km long with sandy beaches, abundant seafood resources and other natural products of economic value.
Quy Nhơn is one of the main industrial centres of the South Central Coast, behind only Da Nang and Nha Trang. It is also the major industrial and service centre of Bình Định Province, including its largest industrial facilities at Phu Tai Industrial Park and Nhon Hoi Economic Zone. The city’s economic activities include industries, export-imports, seaport services, aquatic product husbandry and tourism. The economic trend, at present, is increasingly service-based at the expense of agriculture, forestry and pisciculture.
Cereals are cultivated on 2548ha of Quy Nhơn’s land with an output of 13,021 tons as of 2009, just 2% of the province’s total. Other crops included 10,891 tons of vegetables, 2,795 tons of sugar-cane, as well as smaller amounts of coconuts, peanuts, and cashew nuts.
Much of the city’s industry is concentrated in and around Phu Tai Industrial Park in the west of the city along National Route 1A. Quy Nhon is a major centre of garden furniture manufacturing. It has traditionally been relying on access to wood from Bình Định’s forests as well as the Central Highlands provinces of Gia Lai and Kon Tum and even as far as Cambodia‘s Ratanakiri and Laos‘ Attapeu Province. Most of the furniture factories are located in Phu Tai Industrial Park. Several chemical enterprises that supply the furniture and wood processing industry have been set up in the vicinity of the industrial park.
Other industries in Quy Nhơn process agricultural and aquatic products, or produce construction materials and paper products. Bidiphar is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Quy Nhon that is an exception to the city’s general focus on basic and wood processing industries. Nhon Hoi Economic Zone is central to the city’s and province’s industrial development plans. However, as of late 2010 it was still in the early stages of development, with few factories completed.
