Since its reformation, Soc Trang has seen many changes. The province has consistently gained high economic growth, which was 11.3 percent on average in 2006-2010; the local living standard has improved. These successes are attributed to tireless efforts to promote investment into the province.
In order to mobilise more resources to promote local economic advantages, Soc Trang has recently paid great attention to investment promotion to attract capital for local social-economic development. From 2006 to 2010, the province mobilized total social investment of nearly VND 20,000 billion into many fields, fostering local economic growth.
Total social capital in 2010 was over VND5,500 billion. In 2010, there were 340 additional enterprises registering for establishment with total registered capital of nearly VND 4,000 billion, which increases the number of local enterprises currently operating to 2,161 with total registered investment capital of over VND14,750 billion.
To continue to intensify and increase efficiency of investment mobilizing and appealing activities, in the following time, Soc Trang is going to concentrate on handling the issues of land clearance; raise cooperation between the development plans of industry and those of the province, district and city to create favoured conditions for investment; enhance authority’s assistance for investment in designing investment project plans; forecast and update market information and goods; and locally train human resources. At the same time, create the best conditions for enterprises to access capital to improve and renovate equipment, build manufacturing and business procedures meeting international standards, as well as connecting with investors in terms of information.
In addition, the provincial People’s Committee has made the proposal “Increasing Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI)” aiming at improving management quality to strongly boost investment into local manufacturing and business activities, focusing on private economic sectors and foreign investment. This includes proposed comprehensive solution groups to improve the provincial investment environment, concentrating on two key ones of reforming administrative procedures, best conditioning enterprises to implement activities of investment, development, manufacturing and business and improve qualification of local human resource to fill the needs of investors. Initiating positive effort on supporting enterprises’ development, on March 18th in Hanoi, Soc Trang province and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) held a Signing Ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Agreement on Distributions for the Project Promoting Soc Trang’s Small and Medium Enterprises. The project uses official development assistance and is led by Department of Planning and Investment. The project aims at assisting and increasing the competitiveness of local SMEs.
Director Pham Van Thu of the Centre for Business and Tourism Promotion said that in 2011 Soc Trang would implement investment promotion in some provinces and cities, as well as join investment promotion activities abroad held by the Foreign Investment Agency and Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. At the same time, it will coordinate to hold the Rice Festival for the 2nd time in Soc Trang City, and coordinate and join activities in the 2011 Mekong Delta Economic Cooperation in Ca Mau.
Last year, the province made significant progress in bettering the business environment. As a result, Soc Trang was considered one of the top ten provinces in PCI improvement, moving up by 24 places to rank 17th , and received a “good” evaluation. This year, to boost efficiency of assisting enterprises and investors, the Center focuses on improving the quality of web portals for provincial investment promotion, reviewing and updating modules on priority projects to call for local investment and add more key projects; form inter-industry executive mission to better advisory activity quality, and updating encouraging policies in Soc Trang province.
Thanh Tung
Vietnamese
