Creating Favourable Conditions for Businesses in Industrial Zones

In recent years, with the determination of the whole political system together with efforts to exploit all potential and strengths of the locality, attracting investment into Lam Dong province in general, and to industrial zones in particular, has prospered. The development of industrial zones (IZs) has created a high added value in industrial production, making a great contribution to the industrial production value of Lam Dong province, contributing to accelerating the province's economic restructuring process in the direction of industrialisation and modernisation.

According to Tran Xuan Vuong, Director of Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority, 2016 continued to be a successful year for attracting investment into IZs in the province. During the year, in implementing the Government's Resolution 35/NQ-CP on business support and development up to 2020, the People's Committee of Lam Dong province promulgated an Action Plan which sets out tasks and solutions for administrative procedures reforms, creating favourable business investment environment for enterprises. This is also the most favourable conditions of the Lam Dong IZs in attracting investment. Taking this opportunity, the IZs Authority has implemented investment promotion activities in the two largest cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. After the investment promotion conference in Lam Dong province, many investors have inquired and registered to invest in Phu Hoi and Loc Son industrial zones. By November 2016, Lam Dong IZs Authority granted investment certificates to 10 investors with registered capital of VND1,420 billion and land area of 18.2 hectares. Particularly, in only December 2016, the procedures for granting investment registration certificates to two FDI investors were completed.

In parallel with attracting investment, production and business activities of enterprises in IZs in the locality also achieved satisfactory results, making an important contribution to economic growth targets of the province. Up to now, 35/66 enterprises in Lam Dong IZs have been put into operation and the rest will be put into operation by the end of 2017. Because enterprises in the IZs mainly connect with the province's large material areas such as coffee, vegetables, fruits, forest products, etc, the production of enterprises is stable, contributing positively to the growth of public production, increasing the export turnover. In 2016, export value of the enterprises in the IZs reached US$165 million, accounting for 35 percent of export turnover of Lam Dong province. Not only consuming a large number of agricultural products such as vegetables, roots, fruits and coffee, the enterprises in the IZs also created nearly 8,000 jobs. These positive results also affirmed the operational capacity of enterprises as a driving force for the development of the industry; contributing to the economic restructuring of Lam Dong province.

However, the difficulty at present is that most of the enterprises in the IZs are of small and medium size with limited capital. Meanwhile, they are required to build the ground system and internal roads into their new factory before being put into operation. This requires the enterprises to spend quite a lot, which can affect their initial investment. On the basis of identifying difficulties, the Authority of the IZs has advised enterprises to divide it into several phases and at the same time, actively supported them in obtaining preferential loans under the central and provincial industrial encouragement programmes.

In order to attract more investors, in the past years, Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority has aggressively carried out investment promotion activities through various channels in various forms: providing information and documents at conferences and seminars; directly approaching and working with investors to call for investment in IZs. With the support of Lam Dong People's Committee, every year, the Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority conducts investment promotion conferences in the Northern provinces and Ho Chi Minh City.

In addition, regarding the objective of obtaining the satisfaction of investors and the effectiveness of the projects as a measure of quality of work, Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority also attaches importance to creating a favourable business investment environment for enterprises by promoting administrative reform, transparency of all administrative procedures and reducing 50 percent of the time for settling administrative procedures; regarding businesses and investors as a companion to Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority to handle the work; Civil servants and officials commit not to cause trouble or harassment for investors and enterprises. Mr Vuong said that enterprise development is a long-term, consistent strategy and one of the key tasks in the socio-economic development policy of Lam Dong province. Therefore, the province always creates favourable conditions for investors to find opportunities to invest in IZs in the province. Again, we affirm that with the preferential policy, the practical support of Lam Dong province, the Lam Dong Industrial Zones Authority has been and will continue to create favourable conditions and environment for investors in the future," Mr Vuong stressed.

Truong Thanh - Hoang Lam