When huge projects are just the cake pictures

The promising land

More and more projects in the fields of transport, real estate, tourism, services, mining and energy have been drawn up, which has turned Vietnam into a "promising land.

According to the general Statistical Office (GSO), the total investment capital of the society in 2011 reached 877.9 trillion dong, increasing by 5.7 percent over 2010 and equal to 34.6 percent of GDP. Of this amount, the state economic sector had the investment capital of 341.6 trillion dong, or 38.9 percent of the total investment capital.

One of the most imposing projects is the one on exploiting iron ore at the Thach Khe mine in Ha Tinh – the biggest one in South East Asia. When the project kicked off in 2007, then deputy Chair of the National Assembly Nguyen Sinh Hung stressed that this is a national key project which would help thousands of the poor households in the locality have a new life.

A lot of other mammoth projects have also been launched with honeyed promises about the bright prospects they would generate after the completion. These include the South East Asian biggest wind power plant in Binh Thuan province in 2008, the Las Vegas City in Asia project in Lang Son province, the biggest northern resort in Phu Tho.

All the projects promise to bring lucrative jobs to contractors and a new life to the local poor people, since the investment capital of each of the projects is up to 6 trillion dong.

The pending projects…

However, many of the projects have still been marked as in the "pending” status. According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, 3386 projects out of the 34,607 projects under investment in 2010, or 9.78 percent, were slow in the implementation pace.

Though the Nghe An provincial authorities have many times urged to speed up the implementation of the Do Luong cement plant and spent 100 billion dong to support the project, no considerable progress has made so far, since the day the 1700 billion dong project kicked off five years ago.

The prime minister personally requested Taiwanese Formosa – the investor of the project on Son Duong steel and port complex – to speed up the project implementation in order to generate jobs to local people. However, the investor has not taken any further move, thus making the poor people, who had to move to give land to the project, suffer.

Observers have said that local authorities now tend to "let investors alone,” while they do not keep a close watch to urge the project implementation. As a result, the investors of many projects have been keeping the projects "pending” for no less than 10 years, despite the fact that local people do not have a means of subsistence.

… disillusioning the poor people

Under the plan, 100 percent of the local residents in Thach Hai commune would have to move to give place to the Thach Khe iron ore mining project in Ha Tinh province. To date, nearly 200 households have had their land taken away, but they still have not got the compensation for the site clearance. With no land, no business experience and no capital, the poor people have been in big distress.

The Son Duong steel and port complex project has generated the "biggest emigrant campaign in the central region” with 1800 households and 15,000 people having to leave. The farmers, who have been working in the rice fields for the last many years, now like the fish caught in a shoal, because they have lost land for production.