Thai Nguyen Province: Efforts to Improve Investment Environment

In recent years, Thai Nguyen Province has made remarkable achievements in social and economic development. The annual GDP growth rate verged on 9 per cent a year in the past five years and is estimated at 12-13 per cent in the 2006-2010 period. To realise the socio-economic and development plans, Thai Nguyen Province has made great efforts to better the investment environment to attract all available investment sources to develop businesses. From 2001 to 2005, Thai Nguyen Province implemented a project to improve the investment environment.

 

During the five years of implementing the project, 26 mechanisms and regulations were issued to boost the investment from the private sector. The province had as many as 1,283 enterprises with an aggregate investment capital of VND2,135.7 billion (US$133.44 million), more than 18,000 business households with a registered capital of VND240 billion (US$15 million) and many projects with individual investment capital of thousands of billion Vietnamese dong like the expansion project for Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Co., Thai Nguyen power plant project and Thai Nguyen cement plant project. The implementation of the investment environment improvement project helped promote internal forces to a maximum. From the end of 2004 to date, an addition of VND10,000 billion (US$625 million) has been registered for investment in Thai Nguyen. The prominent projects are VND400 billion (US$16 million) La Hien cement factory expansion plan, which came into operation in early 2006, the underway VND165 billion (US$10.31 million) residential zones in Dong Quang, and the Thai Nguyen commercial centre project valued VND158 billion (nearly US$10 million) in the first phase in Thai Nguyen City’s downtown. The foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction is intensified, and as of June 2006, Thai Nguyen had 21 FDI projects with a total registered capital of US$219 million.

 

The simplified and shortened administrative management mechanism has helped prevent bureaucracy of state officials. The awareness of all sectors in attracting investment and the cooperation of all sectors in calling investment has generated initial successes. Several public organisations have been set up to provide investment promotion and consultancy services for investors, including the Investment Promotion and Consulting Centre and the Trade and Tourism Promotion Centre.

 

Thai Nguyen Province continues to carry out the investment environment project for the 2006-2010 period. The main solutions are to increase the activeness of the provincial leadership in seeking investors and creating favourable conditions for investors; to check planning projects, investment policies and investment procedures and seek supports from various departments, sectors and localities for the Department of Planning and Investment to promote investment. 

 

The provincial authorities will instruct the procedures to set up and submit investment projects; decide new investment projects within 3 days; use professional consultants and learn experience from other localities, publicize land rental rates and land leasing policies; issue infrastructure construction encouragement policies; support site clearance in small industrial zones; and organise regular seminars with investors and enterprises to find measures to boost investment.