Mr. Nguyen Dai Vui, the Director of Department of Planning and Investment. Photo: THAI BINH
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a significant impact on businesses and investment. Could you share about the long-term plans for calling for investment to the province, especially in the areas that are potential in collecting budget to partly compensate for the loss due to business downtime in recent months?
The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy is apparent when many businesses have to freeze, stop operating, or operate at low capacity ... That leads to negative effects on budget revenue.
Moreover, the province has focused its resources on epidemic prevention and control, which amplifies the existing impact on the financial situation. Therefore, apart from solutions to restore and develop production and business, the province eyes on calling for investment to contribute to economic advancement and increase the provincial budget revenue.
Accordingly, the cause of investment promotion has been furnished with long-term and specific strategies for each particular field, locality, economic zone, or industrial park ...
Could you elaborate on the areas and projects that are in the call?
For the industrial parks and economic zones, we ground on their approved planning and functions to build suitable projects for investment mobilization; in which, investment calling for projects that bring about high added value in the Chan May - Lang Co Economic Zone is put at heart.
For industrial zones, the priorities will be projects in mass-production, electronics, automobiles, processing, and manufacturing industries to reduce the dependence on and influence of foreign markets at times of incidents and crises, such as COVID-19…
For An Van Duong new urban area, grounding on the existing adjustment of zone planning, besides real estate projects, the investment mobilization for the completion of the social infrastructure will be targeting projects on hospitals, schools, amusement areas, cultural parks for tourism.
In addition, we call for investment in every area such as agricultural production, agricultural products processing industry, tourism services, real estate; infrastructure of industrial parks, economic zones, non-tariff zones, manufacturing zones, education and training, processing industries, manufacturing, assembly industries, textile and garment supporting industries and other auxiliary industries recognized in the value chains of Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific regions.
Among the investment calling fields you just mentioned, which are the prioritized projects or areas?
It depends whether they are recognized in the short-term or long-term plans, where the specific goals of investment mobilization are laid out.
For the time being, Thua Thien Hue province promotes domestic and foreign investment in every aspect. However, in the era of technology 4.0, information technology (IT) is the field that has strong potential in attracting investment so as to advance the province's existing IT human resources.
Currently, we are focusing on drawing investment in fields related to IT such as information technology industry, cultural industry exploiting the cultural values and heritage of Hue ancient capital, high technology, high-tech agriculture, novel materials, biotechnology, and several other related industries in line with the development orientation of the province.
What about the field of tourism, especially when it is identified as the spearhead economic sector of the province?
With the orientation of developing tourism services as the spearhead economic sector of the province and to achieve the objectives set in the new period of 2021 – 2025, in the year of 2020 and the coming ones, the province will continue to scan and scout for land funds which are suitable for tourism - service development. Therefore, the deployment of investment promotion shall always come alongside the study and establishment of appropriate tourism development models.
To be more specific, at present, the province has developed groups of projects for investment calling in order to contribute to promoting the growth of the tourism industry to make a difference so that Hue will become an attractive and new destination with its own and unique services. Some can be named such as the project group to boost up night tourism or the one to develop products that come from real needs ...
Regarding the project of Phu Bai International Airport, can you give us some updates on the current progress?
The project "Constructing the Passenger Terminal T2 of Phu Bai International Airport" is invested by the Airports Corporation of Vietnam. The project was financed with VND 2,250 billion in total, as an extraction from the corporation’s development investment fund.
The Passenger Terminal T2 project, upon its completion, will achieve the goal of building a passenger terminal to meet the operational capacity of 5 million passengers per year according to the approved plan, thus actively contributing to strengthening the connection between Thua Thien Hue and provinces and cities throughout the country, countries in the region and the world. With keen interest and support from the government and leaders of ministries and sectors, the project has been smoothly executed so far.
To ensure the progress of the project, the provincial People's Committee has sent a written request to the Central Airport Authority, Vietnam Airport Corporation to coordinate with local bodies and sectors to perform relevant procedures to meet the deadlines.
The provincial leaders have always given close instructions on related works and regularly checked on the progress of site clearance to promptly remove obstacles so that the project can be soon started and put into operation.
Thank you so much!
By Tam Hue