Chau Doc Town: Tourism As a Push for Economic Development

Chau Doc Town is located on the Mekong River junction that separates the Tien and Hau rivers. Like other places in the Mekong Delta region, Chau Doc outstands with waterway countryside cultures. Remarkably, Chau Doc residents who are famously united, industrious and creative are building a new town with positive changes and growing confidence in the international economic integration.

 

Chau Doc, with its favourable geographic location for economic development, is seen as the second urban centre of Long An province after Long Xuyen City. Sharing 15.4 km borderline with Cambodia, the town is regarded as an ideal location for cross-border economic development and a gateway to boost trade with Cambodia and other ASEAN countries. Besides, the town is also home to many historical relics and unique cultures - an ideal condition for tourism development. Particularly, the Ba Chua Xu festival on Sam Mount, which was rated the national festival in 2001 by the former Ministry of Culture and Information and the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, annually attracts more than 2.9 million visitors. The town also has many landscapes and rated historical relics like Tay An Temple, Thoai Ngoc Hau Tomb, Hang Pagoda, Chau Phu communal house, Cham Chau Giang landscape, Vinh Te canal, etc.

 

Led by the policy of exploiting local potentialities and promoting local advantages, the authorities of Chau Doc Town have determined to take trade, service and tourism as decisive spearheads in economic restructure. From this strategy, the town has stepped up investment promotion activities, rearranged and built rural markets, planned and built commercial centres and supermarkets in the town’s centre and other places, encouraged all economic sectors to take part in commerce and service activities. With its effort for economic restructure, the town’s economy has made impressive growths in the past years, with service sector expanding 32.59 percent annually. Especially, in the first 10 months of 2009, the trade, service and tourism sectors surged, with revenues at markets reaching VND2,210.855 billion, 28.5 percent higher than the yearly plan. The number of visitor arrivals totalled 2,911,500 in the first 10 months of 2009, beating the target by 16.48 percent.

 

In 2009, despite facing up numerous challenges, thanks to instruction of central authorities and effort of local authorities and people, the town economy still kept high growth rate. Per capita GDP was VND15.243 million in the first 10 months of 2009, up 9.17 percent year on year. In the coming time, Chau Doc will open a border gate with Cambodia in Vinh Nguon commune to tap potentialities and advantages of the border economy to develop its trade, service and tourism sectors, thus contributing to the development of the economy of the province in general and of the town in particular.

 

Endowed with many famous historical relics, landscapes and specially the borderline shared with Cambodia, Chau Doc is very attractive to tourists. The town is also the transit centre of commodities and passengers to Cambodia. Remarkably, with the advantage and development of the nationally ranked Ba Chua Xu Festival on Sam Mount, the number of visitors and pilgrims has increased steadily in the past years. Apart from making ceremonial offerings, visitors and pilgrims feel an absolute security in tourism management in Chau Doc Town thanks to its guarantee of public security and close supervision over trading, parking and traffic activities. In addition, Chau Doc also called for more capital from investors and created most favourable conditions for tourism and travel companies to invest in restaurants, hotels and river wharves along the Hau River, parking places for tours discovering Mekong River, Cambodia or Mekong Delta. With its persevering endeavours, in spite of difficulties arising from the global economic crisis in 2009, the tourism sector still served over 2.8 million visitor arrivals, representing an on-year increase of 11 percent and making up 64.95 percent of the GDP. This figure reaffirms the strong advantage of local tourism development of Chau Doc Town.

 

With its determinations to develop a tourism sector into a spearhead economic sector, Chau Doc Town has spared no efforts to positioning its own position in the An Giang key triangle economy: Long Xuyen - Chau Doc - Tan Chau.