Nghe An is a province with high quality natural resources, which concentrate into communities, favourable for exploitation and production of construction materials. Through exploration, it has been found that there are reserves of limestone reaching more than 1 billion tonnes, 982 million tonnes of white stone; 260 million tonnes of basalt stone:; 54 million tonnes of black stone; 160 million tonnes of granite; 300 million tonnes of clay for cement production; 300 million tonnes a year of clay for producing bricks, tiles, ceramic and porcelain products; 5 million tonnes of coal, and 10 million tonnes of peat.

 

Investing in exploiting this advantage, Nghe An has built four cement plants: Cau Duoc, 12^th of September in Anh Son, 19^th of May and Hoang Mai. Of which, Hoang Mai cement plant using the French technology has the capacity of 1.4 million tonnes a year. The factories producing construction materials, exploiting and processing natural resources are located all over provincial territory. In 2004, the whole province produced nearly 1 million tonnes of cement; 1.7 million cubic metres of construction stones; 170,000 tonnes of basalt stone; 230,000 tonnes of white stone; 350 million pieces of brick and titles; 150 million pieces of paving titles and unbaked bricks; 20,000 centrifugal electric poles, 50,000 electric poles of A shape and 10,000 cubic metres of MDF plywood.

For the processing industry of agro-forestry and fishery products, Nghe An has built 3 sugar mills (Song Con, Song Lam and Tate & Lyle), many agro-forestry products processing enterprises (tea, condensed pineapple juice, cassava starch, latex, coffee and paper) as well as aqua products processing, brewery and mineral water enterprises.

To facilitate the operation of these enterprises, the province has invested nearly VND300 billion in developing roads to material zones, provided preferential loans for farmers to reclaim land, buy fertiliser and seeds. These businesses have invited farmers to visit their enterprises to see the production lines. They also send technical cadres to each material zone for guiding farmers to apply the technical progress in intensive cultivation and sign the consumption contracts with farmers.

Many farmers having capital, technical knowledge and management capacity have put their money in reclaiming hilly land for setting up plantations. They have become the pioneers in large-scale production models. They hire labourers and use machineries in preparing soil, cultivating, taking care of crops, harvesting and transporting products under industrial methods. The production efficiency of growers is closely linked with the processing efficiency of enterprises. The relationship between “four people” (farmer, entrepreneur, creditor and state) has become closer. Their thinking and the way of doing business have been changed in positive directions.

With this business strategy, up to now, Nghe An has 30,000 hectares of sugarcanes providing 2 million tonnes of raw materials per year; 6,000 hectares of tea giving 44,000 tonnes of fresh tea buds a year; 3,000 hectares of pineapples with the production of 120,000 tonnes per year; 4121 hectares of cassava giving 80,000 tonnes a year; 2,400 hectares of coffee providing the output of 1,400 tonnes of coffee beans; 30,000 hectares of ground nuts giving 32,000 tonnes of nuts; 13,500 hectares of ponds and lakes turning out 25,000 tonnes of fish and nearly 50,000 hectares of paper material trees. This is the foundation for developing processing industry and fast increasing the commodities. In 2004, the province produced 150,000 tonnes of sugar; 2,100 tonnes of condensed pineapple juice; 10,000 tonnes of cooking oil; 4,530 tonnes of dried tea buds; 1,200 tonnes of cassava starch; 20,000 tonnes of wheat flour; 30 million litres of beer; 2 million litres of mineral water and 3,500 tonnes of frozen products.

Noticeably, while many agro-forestry and fishery products processing enterprises in the country are suffering from losses, in Nghe An, they have gained profits for many continuous years. The sugar and sugarcane joint venture of Nghe An Tate & Lyle, a profit-making enterprise, has raised the pressing capacity from 6,000 to 9,000 tonnes of sugarcanes per day. These enterprises operate effectively because of modern processing technologies and lower material cost compared to other provinces. In the recent crop, they bought sugarcanes at the price of VND230,000 – 250,000/tonne while the average sugarcane price in the country was VND330,000/tonne.

With the strategy of developing small industry and handicraft together with craft villages, Nghe An has raised its industrial production value. In 1991, it was VND455 billion, in 1995: VND791 billion and in 2004: VND 3,467 billion. The industrial ratio has been increased from 12.2 percent to 26 percent in the GDP structure. This achievement has been resulted from right investment.

Furthermore, for effective exploitation of provincial potentials and advantages, Nghe An has issued many incentive policies for attracting investment to the locality. Large-scale industrial parks have been formulated and are calling for domestic and foreign investors like North of Vinh City, South of Cam, Cua Lo, Hoang Mai, Phu Quy and tens of industrial and small industry parks managed by the districts. However, for ensuring the effective operation of investors, the first thing the province has to do is to root up "the thorns" in the investment procedures. That means to carry out the reform in the public administrative management activities to create friendly environment for investors and more equal playing ground for different economic sectors.  

Nhat Minh