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Vietnamese firms ignore rural potential: media

Xinhua, August 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Despite being seen as the decisive factor in achieving sustainable rural development, Vietnam's business sector still remained largely an untapped power, local newspaper Vietnam News on Wednesday quoted officials and experts as saying.

The number of businesses investing in rural development went down from 1.6 percent in 2007 to less than 1 percent in 2014.

Almost five years after the implementation of a national target program on new rural development, total investment amounts to 851. 8 trillion Vietnamese dong (about 38 billion U.S. dollars).

Of this, only 4.9 percent came from the business sector, failing to reflect the sector's potential by a long shot, said the Central Coordination Office on New Rural Development.

A report by the General Statistics Office indicated only 0.96 percent of the country's businesses operated in agriculture, forestry and aquaculture last year.

At a conference on Tuesday, organized by the General Council of Agriculture and Rural Development, experts said factors such as climate change, inadequate infrastructure and the lack of incentives to encourage businesses to invest were hindering rural development.

Truong Cong Ngan, head of Quang Ninh's provincial rural development committee, said it was absolutely essential for business that the country's policies and legal mechanisms remained stable in the long term.

Fear of frequently-changing regulations and government policies had been a major roadblock for many businesses wanting to invest in rural development. This was especially true for agriculture as it often required a large amount of investment over an extended period of time, Ngan said.

Deputy head of the Central Committee for Business Reform and Development, Pham Quoc Doanh, said both central Government and local authorities had not provided sufficient incentives for private businesses to invest in agriculture.

Vietnam also lacked an agricultural insurance scheme, which according to Doanh, was a big hindrance to businesses. Other experts said it could be impossible to penetrate the global market with just 10 million farmers. Endi