Nha Trang City: Pleasant and Peaceful Sea Tourism

3:26:23 PM | 7/8/2005

Nha Trang is a beautiful coastal city in Central Vietnam. It is endowed with picturesque landscapes and blue sea, unique islands and a moderate climate. It has been an ideal destination for Vietnamese and foreign tourists for the past hundred years and more. The people of Nha Trang are also friendly and diligent and have a long history in traditional professions such as seafood processing. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Minh, Chairman of Nha Trang People’s Committee spoke to a VIB Forum reporter.

Nha Trang is a famous tourist centre, could you outline some achievements of the city in recent years?

Nha Trang has long been the political, economic and cultural centre of Khanh Hoa province. It is an important tourist city of Vietnam, a centre of science and trade of the Southern provinces and Central Highlands, a green, clean, beautiful city with high income level. With stable economic growth, the living conditions of the people have been improved significantly. In 2003, GDP per capita was US$1,095, 2.5 times the average in Vietnam. GDP growth rate was 13 per cent. The economic structure has been shifted in favour of service-tourism and industry.

Service-tourism 46.75 per cent

Industry 37.49 -

Agro-forestry-fisheries 15.76 -

Due to economic development, Nha Trang has improved the living conditions of the people with better social welfare, more schools, hospitals and sports centres. With those achievements, in 1999, Nha Trang was recognised by the government as a Grade 2 City. And in June 2003, the city was admitted as an official member of the Club of most beautiful bays in the world.

As the natural environment is most important to tourism, do you have any protection programmes?

To make the city a memorable tourist venue, Nha Trang has carried out a programme of environmental protection with projects on waste treatment and drainage. The World Bank is considering a loan of US$70 million for the programme. The city will organise the collection and treatment of waste, supervise and direct the protection of the environment, and at the same time, protect the wildlife and preserve bio-diversity. Green parks in the city and forests in surrounding areas will be developed to ensure a reasonable coverage.

Could you predict what Nha Trang will be like in 2010 and how to ensure its all-round development?

From now to 2010, Nha Trang will try to achieve the level of a Grade 1 City. The city will accelerate the implementation of investment projects in industry and tourism, maintaining an economic growth rate of 12 per cent a year, increasing service revenue to over 50 per cent of the GDP with tourism and fisheries as two spearheads of the economy.

The city will focus on the training of human resources, meeting the demand of economic development. It will also encourage all economic sectors to invest in tourism, diversifying tourist products and protecting the environment. The city planning, land and resources will be better managed. The economic restructuring will be carried out most efficiently. The administrative reform will be accelerated in the interest of the people and investors.