Local authorities have decided to remove some industrial zones (IZs) to make room for the rice fields. 

In March 2012, the Prime Minister requested local authorities to check the operation of the IZs in the localities and suggest the solutions to the idle and ineffective ones. The decision was made after competent agencies, when reviewing the development of IZs nationwide, pointed out that too many IZs have been established, many of which have been left idle or have very low occupancy rate, which is a big waste of land and money.

In Tay Ninh province, when programming the land fund many years ago, districts’ authorities all want to build industrial parks which they believed would help develop local economies, bring more turnover and generate jobs.

However, their plan has not come true. After many years, the IZs still cannot attract investors. Meanwhile, the land has been life unused, causing a big waste to the natural resources. As a result, the localities have to reconsider their land use programming and they have decided to remove a lot of IZs out from the program.

According to Pham Van Quan, Deputy Director of the Tay Ninh provincial Department of Industry and Trade, the province has decided to eliminate 10 out of the 23 programmed IZs to take back 1250 hectares of land, which would be given back to rice fields, rubber and cassava plants.

Quan said that in the last few years, as districts’ authorities rushed to build IZs, the number of IZs has soared to 23, which have appropriated the land for agricultural production.

The 10 IZs which have been excluded from the IZ development program include Binh Minh, Co Khi, Bau Rong, Long Chu, Tien Thuan, Bau Don, Suoi Ngo, Tan Dong, Dong Khoi and Suoi Can, of which Bau Don, Long Chu and Bau Rong have the designed development area of more than 200 hectares.

In principle, Quan said, only the IZs to be developed on public or wild land would be maintained, while the IZs on rice, rubber or cassava land would be removed. The rubber trees on the land have grown, which means that it would be very costly to compensate farmers for the site clearance.

The HCM City authorities in 2007 decided to develop 30 IZs, expected to cover an area of 1900 hectares. However, according to the city’s Industry and Trade Department, only 11 IZs have found infrastructure developers so far, and only three of which have attracted businesses, namely Xuan Thoi Son A, Nhi Xuan and Le Minh Xuan.

In a recent report, the department pointed out that it is very difficult to attract infrastructure developers, because it always takes much money to compensate people to take land.

Truong Minh Khach, a senior official of the HCM City Department for Industry and Trade, said that the city would remove some IZs which would lead to the decrease of the land area for industrial production to 1100 hectares.

Instead of building IZs, the land areas would be reserved for ornamental plants, farm produce, or would be used for the trade, service and residential quarter purposes.

The Dong Nai provincial authorities, who planned to develop 43 IZs, are considering weeding out some IZs from the list of programmed IZs after seeing that a lot of IZs remain on paper, and many others have been left idle in remote areas.

Statistics showed that people’s committees have approved 1640 IZ development projects by 2020.

Source: TBKTSG