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Policies to help rural development
Dao Quang Thu, head of the Department for Agricultural Economy under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, spoke to Nong thon Ngay nay (Countryside Today) about a project to boost agriculture.
How do we promote investment in rural areas?
After 20 years of the Doi moi (Renewal), Viet Nam’s agriculture and rural areas have strongly and comprehensively developed. However, the achievements have not correlated to the country’s potential. Land and water resources have not been effectively exploited. The forest economy contributes little to the GDP despite their large areas. Besides, average production value on each hectare of land is much lower than in many other countries. Furthermore, we have a long coastline with a large area of sea but we have not focused on developing offshore fishing industries and aquaculture. Additionally, economics and labour restructuring have not been boosted.
In this context, in order to keep developing agriculture and rural areas, we must reorganise production, promote large-scale production models such as farming co-operatives, and enlarge agricultural enterprises. By developing agricultural enterprises, we can attract more investment capital and apply modern science and technology to production.
As there are few enterprises running business in rural areas, we are creating mechanisms and policies to encourage enterprises to invest in agriculture and rural development. Service enterprises will cover output and input for agricultural production. Agricultural, sylvicultural and aquacultural processing enterprises will consume local materials. Once these enterprises are developed, the rural economy will be effectively restructured, helping generate jobs and increase local people’s income.
If we keep the production based on individual households as at present, agriculture will stand still and find it hard to develop.
Enterprises are not interested in investing in rural areas so how do you plan to encourage them to contribute to agricultural and rural development?
The reasons are weak economic and social conditions and infrastructure, high costs, bigger risks, management difficulties and frequent epidemic diseases and natural disasters. Besides, the State’s support and incentive policies are not attractive to investors and enterprises.
We are composing new policies which are expected to create more favourable conditions for investment in agriculture and rural development.
What will the new policies focus on?
A research group has been established to work out how to encourage enterprises to invest in agriculture and rural development. The group is presided over by the Central Institute for Economic and there are participants from relevant ministries.
We examine all the State’s mechanisms and policies on the rural development and evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of every policy.
The Ministry of Planning and Investment expects to soon submit to the Government the draft decree on mechanisms and policies required, which are anticipated to focus on land, capital, human resources and infrastructure.
What are the policy breakthrough?
As far as I know, there will be two major parts to the policies. The first one is resolutions directly handled and implemented by the State, such as helping enterprises more easily access land, forest, sea and other natural resources; planning sectors development; improving infrastructure; resolving environmental issues of industrial parks.
The second part will include policies on direct support for investors, for instance supporting premises free-of-charge, sponsoring enterprise establishment, providing labourers with vocational training, assisting enterprises in applying modern technology and applying tax exemption and reduction to enterprises in certain years. The support rate is being considered.
VietNamNet, VietNamNews
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