VietNamNet Bridge – Poor farmers living in rural areas have
been afflicted because of the “hy-spy” game played by Chinese merchants. After
collecting ornamental trees in masses, they quietly disappeared, leaving
farmers with unsold trees and losses.
One time, the styled ornamental
trees were sold for several millions or several hundred of millions of dong –
the sums of money big enough to make someone become rich overnight.
In many poor rural areas,
Vietnamese farmers gave up rice farming and rushed to grow ornamental trees.
Dien Xa hamlet in Nam Truc
district of Nam Dinh province is one of the areas. It has been well known in
Vietnam as an ornamental tree village for the last 700 years. However, local
residents had just developed ornamental trees to satisfy their hobbies, until
one day 10 years ago, they realized that ornamental trees could bring them fat
money.
Dien Xa’s local people then
rushed to grow ornamental trees to sell for profits. The village was once
bustling from the morning to the afternoon with people from Hai Phong, Hanoi,
Nghe An, Dong Nai and HCM City flocking to buy trees.
As the demand was high,
ornamental trees got more and more expensive. Some households then owned the
gardens of ornamental trees worth hundreds of billions of dong. Especially,
Dien Xa’s people even tried of exporting ornamental trees for higher profits.
All the land areas then were
reserved for ornamental trees, and all other trees were chopped down to be
replaced with the trees, especially sanh tree.
Sanh were not only grown in
household gardens, but also in the rice fields as well. The land area for rice
cultivation has been gradually narrowed, while the ornamental tree growing area
has been increasing rapidly.
A report by the Nam Dinh
provincial authorities showed that since 2006, about 2,600 hectares of
uncultivated land has been upgraded for sanh plantation, while nearly 2,000
hectares of rice growing land has turned into sanh growing area.
The ornamental tree movement has
led to the oversupply, and of course, the dramatic tree price decreases. Vu Van
Quynh in Hai Hau district complained that he spent VND500 million to grow 1,000
sanh trees, which brought big loss to him. In 2012, the sanh tree price fell
down by 80 percent, which forced him to bargain the trees away for VND30 million,
the sum of money not big enough to pay for the watering works.
Quynh, like the other thousands
of farmers in Nam Dinh province, suffered from his overly high investment in
sanh tree development.
In mid 2006, Chinese merchants
suddenly came and ordered sanh trees at high prices, which then prompted people
to rush to grow sanh. In 2006-2008, sanh trees alone brought the turnover of
VND300-400 billion to Nam Dinh province, while the figure soared to VND1
trillion in 2010.
The profit was so attractive that
even the provincial people’s committee also encouraged people to develop
ornamental trees, which can bring the profits much higher than the rice
cultivation.
Especially, the documents
released by the provincial authorities during that period all said that growing
ornamental trees was the key to the local economic development.
However, sanh have been selling
very slowly since mid 2011. Chinese, the main buyers, have stopped importing
sanh. As a result, thousands of sanh trees cannot be sold, while billions of
dong of people has not been taken back.
As ornamental trees are now
unsalable, people have returned to their rice fields and pay a heavy price for
their investments.
Dat Viet
Business & Investment Opportunities
Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd (SBC) is incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Health care and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN 's area. We are currently changing the platform of www.yourvietnamexpert.com, if any request, please, contact directly Dr Christian SIODMAK, business strategist, owner and CEO of SBC at christian.siodmak@gmail.com. Many thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment