Ca Mau Administrators' Ideas: Self-confident in International Economic Integration

To keep the pace of Ca Mau’s agriculture with the orientation of industrialisation and modernisation to produce high-grade agricultural commodities for the market, the sector is increasing investment in intensive cultivation and polyculture to raise productivity, especially in rezoning high quality rice and sugar material areas. At the same time, the province is also developing small farming areas for the combination of agriculture and aquaculture with suitable crops and breeding animals. At present, the agricultural sector of Ca Mau Province is completing and multiplying large-scale production models with products of high quality, safety and environmental friendliness: rice - shrimp and rice -fish. To turn out such sorts of products, the use of chemicals is limited as much as possible.

 

Besides, to develop, the agricultural sector of Ca Mau Province actively cooperates with several organisations and governments of many nations in the world such as Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, the World Bank, Danida, Care, JICA, Heifer and International. We are ready to receive all investors in Vietnam and from other countries to seek cooperative opportunities in Ca Mau.

 

Vietnam has officially joined the World Trade Organisation; hence, the banking sector in Vietnam in general and in Ca Mau in particular is under more pressure in operation. To expand the credit assistance for all economic sectors in the integration process, the State Bank has focused on strengthening the deposit mobilisation of commercial banks. It also mobilises medium-term and long-term capital of all economic sectors and issues promissory notes and bank bonds. Besides, the State Bank supports banks to widen its capital mobilisation networks to even communes and residential areas to draw idle money from organisations and citizens. It also helps banks, especially Agribank and commercial banks, to open branches in remote areas, thus, enabling them to stabilise payment services and diversify payment modes to draw idle cashes and savings of the society. Additionally, the banking sector concentrated on building up the human resources by training and retraining its staff, renovating working styles and behaviour.

 

In the past years, the fisheries sector of Ca Mau Province has grown strongly but still exposed its spontaneity, lack of planning and negative impacts on the environment and urban scenery. Moreover, the fisheries processing industry has actually remained undeveloped and lacked of concrete orientations and policies. At present, the critical demand for space for local companies and investors to build or upgrade processing factories has not really been satisfied. Vietnam has integrated into the world economy; hence, the trade disputes are increasing and the challenges are multiplied. In addition, when the aquatic products of Vietnam are developed and become rivals of many countries, the competition between Vietnamese products and foreign ones will be increasingly fiercely. For this point of time, importing countries will raise the barriers to protect their domestic production such as antibiotic sediment control, hygiene and safety and antidumping tax, which have triggered various difficulties and challenges against our companies. In the meantime, we lack international experience to settle such challenges; thus, the negative impacts on production and business are inevitable.

 

In order to increase the export turnover and realise the target of US$1 billion export turnover in 2010, Ca Mau Province is in cooperation with local companies to simultaneously carry out three key factors, namely the market, the production condition and material. In particular, the market is considered the decisive stage, the production condition as a breakthrough stage and the material as an important stage.

 

In the past few years, the environment for the attraction of investment to boost trade and tourism in Ca Mau Province has significantly improved. However, apart from the strong points of fisheries material areas, other important factors, including transport system, human resources, industrial zones, feasible projects and administrative reform, failed to meet the requirements of investors. In my opinion, Ca Mau Province should make full use of its advantages, surmount weak points and better environment, policies and skills for investment, trade and tourism promotion activities in order to compete with other provinces and cities in the country. Furthermore, the province also actively consolidates relationship with Vietnamese embassies and chambers of commerce in other countries and foreign ones in Vietnam. It also strengthens its integration in key markets and identifies attractive fields in order to organise good trade promotion activities in other countries. Last but not least, the province regularly coordinates its activities with regional trade, investment and tourism promotion agencies to successfully organise promotion activities in other provinces in the country and in Ca Mau itself.

 

Tourism is specified as an economic sector; hence, the competition is objective and inevitable, especially when Vietnam joined the world economy. In general, the tourism sector of Ca Mau Province is uncompetitive against other provinces and cities nationwide. Therefore, the Ca Mau tourism sector has put forth the development strategy with specific steps that match the practical conditions of the province and match general trend of the country and the world.

 

To realise the preset objectives, in my opinion, Ca Mau should focus on building up a competent tourism workforce to bring the semi-professional tourism business to the professional one. Meantime, Ca Mau should intensify inter-sector and inter-location cooperation in planning the development of the tourism and tourism products, speeding up tourism promotion, restoring and exploiting natural resources and infrastructure.

Joining the world economy, the trading field of Vietnam in general and Ca Mau in particular will have favourable conditions and opportunities to develop but it also has to overcome numerous difficulties and challenges. Therefore, the trading sector of Ca Mau Province has focused on realising solutions to tune up with the world movement. Accordingly, apart from speeding up the traditional distribution network, the sector has also developed and applied modern distribution networks, intensified trade promotion activities to consolidate the domestic market, expand the foreign markets and diversify trading methods. At the same time, it also stepped up the production of new export commodities (garment, textile, leather, footwear, mechanical engineering, handicrafts, etc) and developed fisheries products. Besides, the trading sector also rearranges the production (aquaculture and offshore fisheries) and exporting companies and renovates technologies to sharpen competitiveness.