Can Tho’s supportive policies a magnet for foreign investors
Can Tho’s supportive policies a magnet for foreign investors
The Mekong Delta city of Can Tho will host a major investment promotion conference for 2018 with the theme ‘Sharing Potential for Mutual Development’ on August 10. Vo Thanh Thong, Chairman of the Can Tho People’s Committee, spoke to VIR’s Huu Phuc about the city’s potential and advantages, as well as its efforts in building a pro-business investment environment in Can Tho.
What advantages set the city apart from its regional peers?
The city of Can Tho has a strategic position, as it is located at the heart of the Mekong Delta region. Apart from enjoying fairly developed technical and economic infrastructure and a favourable geographic position, Can Tho is a robust economic, finance, education and training, science-technology, and healthcare centre of the region.
Home to abundant and skilled human resources, Can Tho is poised to serve as a growth engine to drive the region’s development. Generally, Can Tho is a youthful city full of potential in the region’s dynamic development landscape. Favourable nature and fertile land has made the city an ideal area for agricultural development, particularly planting rice, specialty fruit trees, aquaculture, and livestock breeding.
Can Tho has succeeded in building some major industries with competitive advantages, such as seafood processing, garment and textiles, footwear, food and beverage production, plastic, rubber, and chemicals.
The city is currently home to eight industrial zones (IZs) seeking further investment, with a total area surpassing 2,279 hectares. Its position amid the region’s big river systems, as well as the intermingled river and stream networks, provide Can Tho with an evergreen eco-system all year round, while its distinct culture and history makes the city appealing to visitors with a variety of tours on offer.
As for trade and services, Can Tho is a centre for shopping, serving the whole region and other parts of the country with its huge volume of products and services.
Last year, its sales and services revenue hit VND106 trillion ($4.69 billion), just behind Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. With nearly 1.3 million residents, 75 per cent of them of working age, Can Tho offers abundant human resources to meet investors’ requirements. With a well-developed infrastructure of road and waterway transport systems, seaports, airports, and logistics services, Can Tho provides easy access to other localities in the region and acts as one of the major import-export hubs nationwide.
What sectors does the city prioritise for investment?
In our view, the projects in need of investment must be put forward on a selective basis to ensure bringing practical effects to socio-economic development not only for Can Tho, but for the whole delta region.
To ensure socio-economic development benefits all people and enterprises, Can Tho has made public a wish list of 54 projects seeking investment totaling VND124 trillion ($5.48 billion) and covering 4,780ha.
The projects focus on industrial development for high-tech agricultural zones, IZs, and industrial clusters, also including projects dealing with IT, logistics, energy, tourism infrastructure, real estate, transport, culture, sports, and healthcare.
How will Can Tho attract investors into these projects?
Investors have shown interest in 44 out of the 54 projects, totalling an area of 4,400 ha and an estimated VND112.9 trillion ($5 billion) in total investment
capital. Significantly, 22 out of these 44 projects have the potential for short-term deployment, as the investors have satisfied all legal requirements. These projects are valued at VND82 trillion ($4.34 billion) and cover 2,756ha.
Does Can Tho get any speicalised policies from the government to realise the city’s socioeconomic development plans?
The National Assembly’s Standing Committee has advocated a governmental decree on regulating some specific mechanisms on investment, finance, budget, and power decentralisation applicable to Can Tho. This is expected to create new resources for development through suitable policy incentives, thus enabling the city to grow more sustainably into the future. It also set to make deserving contributions to the region and to the whole country’s development.
What are the local authorities doing so as to effectively support investors and businesses?
In recent years, in addition to applying government-regulated incentive policies and mechanisms, investors doing business in the city received active support in various phases of their project implementation, from investment preparation, compensation, and site clearance to technical support and transport infrastructure construction. The investors have also received support in credit rates, human resource training, investment promotion, and technological innovation. Dialogues between local leaders and businesses are held periodically to help the investors tackle difficulties they face in a timely manner.
Therefore, over the past six years, Can Tho has constantly found itself among the top 15 cities and provinces in the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) ranking. Last year, the city ranked 10th out of 63 Vietnamese localities in the PCI. The local authorities plan to continue seeking and supporting investors, strives to build up an increasingly conducive investment environment for the business community. It also aims to turn the city into a trustworthy and attractive destination for investors.
