Thousands hectares of rice fields have been cleared to give place for IZs, but the occupancy rate of the IZs remains very modest, at less than 14 percent. In Bac Giang province, hundreds of hectares of land in IZs have been left idle. Local farmers have lost cultivation land and provincial authorities have to pay money for the site clearance, while the land has been left unused. Meanwhile, the provincial authorities still continue licensing more projects.
IZs, hi-tech zones left fallow
Nguyen Van Long, an old farmer, pointing hands to the land area which has been taken back by the local authorities to give to the investors of the Van Trung IZ project, said that the land area was once a large rice field. Located on the bank of the Cau River, having a good irrigation system, the rice field always gave bountiful crops to local farmers.
However, the “rice granary” has existed no more. Long and other farmers have left the rice field to give up place for the IZ project. However, the hundreds of hectares of land have still been left unused over the last four years, since Long and the farmers stopped cultivating rice on the field.
The Van Trung IZ project, which was advertised to become the place which gathers hi-tech projects making personal computers, laptops, mobile phones and other modern equipments, is now just a fallow land. The only things on the 100 hectare land area that people can see when they stand on the 1A Highway are a billboard and the grass.
According to the Bac Giang provincial IZ Management Board, the Van Trung IZ project would cover an area of 960 hectares, including 433 hectares to be reserved for the IZ. In 2008, the local authorities gave 230 hectares of “clean land” to the Taiwanese investor. However, no further progress has been made so far, and the land plot still has been left idle.
A big waste of the society’s resources
The Quang Chau IZ project is located just five kilometers from the Van Trung IZ. It got the investment license in 2005, under which the project would cover an area of 426 hectares, mostly agricultural land.
All the land area was allocated by the local authorities to the investor, the Saigon-Bac Giang IZ Company already. However, the investor has not made any further step to implement the project. To date, five enterprises have re-leased the land (25.42 hectares) for setting up their production workshops.
While the two big projects were still left unimplemented, Bac Giang provincial authorities granted investment licenses to two other IZ projects, the Song Khe-Noi Hoang IZ (158.7 hectares) invested by Hoang Hai Housing Trade Company and the Bac Giang Shipbuilding Industry Company, and the Vietnam-Korea IZ (101.53 hectares).
The former project, the Song Khe-Noi Hoang IZ, has not been kicked off yet, and what the project has now is just a fallow land area. Meanwhile, the latter project has just been on… paper.
More and more IZ projects licensed
There are five IZs in Bac Giang province, which cover an area of 1209 hectares. Of these, only the Dinh Tram IZ, established in 2003, has been nearly fully occupied. Meanwhile, the operation of other IZs has been very bad, while only 14 percent of the land in the IZs has been occupied, which is really a big waste of the resources.
According to the Bac Giang People’s Council, though existing IZs have not been fully occupied, the provincial people’s committee continues granting new licenses.
Bac Giang has developed thousands of hectares of agricultural land into the land for IZ development, spent thousands of billions of dong for the site clearance and infrastructure items. However, the investment has brought very modest efficiency. In the first six months of 2010, the total sum of money in tax collected from IZs was 3.5 billion dong only, while the figure was 15 billion dong in a long period from 2006 to 2010.
Source: Lao dong
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