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LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) – India’s Tata Steel signed a joint venture deal on Wednesday to build an integrated steel plant in Vietnam at a cost of $5 billion. Tata Steel, the world’s sixth largest steel company, said in a statement it would build the plant with a capacity of 4.5 million tonnes in three phases with Vietnam Steel Corp. (VN Steel) and Vietnam Cement Industries (Vicem). Vietnam produced 4.2 million tonnes of steel products last year, up 10.8 percent from 2006, but still less than 0.5 percent of the world’s total annual production of 1.34 billion tonnes. VN Steel is now Vietnam’s top steel maker with a capacity of around 5 million tonnes per year and the new plant will almost double the annual production capacity for the country, now a small player in the $800 billion steel industry. “The first phase of the complex will be a cold rolling mill to be commissioned by end 2010,” the company said. “We believe that this partnership is well placed to make the most of the tremendous growth potential Vietnam possesses,” said B. Muthuraman, managing director of Tata Steel. Source CNBC