Five or Ten Days for Investment Licences in Yen Bai Province
Over the past years, Yen Bai province has issued open policies to attract Vietnamese and foreign investors. Recently, the Yen Bai People’s Committee organised a meeting with investors in Hanoi. On this occasion, ViB Forum interviewed Nguyen Van Ngoc, vice chairman of the Yen Bai People's Committee.
What advantages does Yen Bai province have to attract investors?
Yen Bai province has a convenient geographic location for economic development. This is a gate to the northwestern region in Vietnam and southwestern region in China. In particular, the province has great potential in forestry with around 300,000 hectares of forest land, in which around 200,000 cubic metres of wood and around 100,000 tonnes of bamboo. This is a potential for the development of artificial wood and paper pulp production. Yen Bai has 13,000 hectares under tea trees, capable of supplying around 60,000 tonnes of fresh tea buds. Also, the province has 30,000 hectares under cinnamon trees, which can produce 2,000 tonnes of dried cover.
The province now has enough materials for investors to develop processing plants for condensed pineapple juice. Also, the province has high quality fruit, such as orange, grapefruit, longan and persimmon. Yen Bai has abundant minerals with over one billion cubic metres of limestone in the districts of Yen Binh and Luc Yen, around 200 million tonnes of iron core in Van Yen and Van Chan districts, let alone other minerals, such as lead, zinc, precious stone and mineral water.
Yen Bai province has worked out a long list of projects calling for investment. Which fields is the province concentrating on?
We are calling for investment in six fields, including commodity-based agro-forestry production, medical material and flower growing to combine the development of material supply areas with processing plants, mineral mining and processing, construction material production, infrastructure development, ecotourism, and services.
What incentives has the province offered to Vietnamese investors?
Vietnamese investors will enjoy the lowest land rent within the price frame set by the Government and a further 25 per cent reduction, according to each concrete project. Land rent will be completely exempted during the life of projects on forestation, industrial crop growing, aquaculture, and animal husbandry. Projects of investment encouragement will be refunded 100 per cent of corporate income tax for five years and 50 per cent for five following years on a basis of money contributed to the budget. It will take investors between five and ten days to get their investment licences. We will provide subsidies for market exploration for projects on manufacturing goods for export. Also, we will give export achievement bonus and support for marketing and trademark development to investors.
What effectiveness has the province's investment policies gained?
Over the past two years, the province has mobilised VND 300 billion out of VND 3,000 billion of registered capital of over 30 projects developed by enterprises of various economic sectors. In particular, around 20 projects on industrial production, material forest growing and tourism development have become operational. Many of them gained a high effectiveness in their first year’s operation, helping create jobs for 3,200 people. This year, ten projects are expected to start operation and six more projects are on the verge of being developed with a total investment of VND 850 billion. We hope that Yen Bai province will receive more attention from investors in the coming time.
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