Heightening the 'weight' of the brand name of Dong Thap in the eyes of investors

Over recent years, thanks to considerable efforts made by local authorities at all levels, Dong Thap has established its image as a province having good governance, wholeheartedly supporting businesses, and providing clearly-outlined policies and transparent administrative formalities.

Building its own image

Dong Thap is now ranked first in the Mekong River Delta and one of the leading provinces in Viet Nam regarding the criteria of Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) and Public Administration Reform Index (PAR INDEX). This achievement has resulted from the serious implementation of the province’s socio-economic development master plan in the 2017-2020 period and the following years.

Dong Thap is an agricultural province, with features of geographical position, infrastructure, and human resources similar to several other regional localities. However, due to the province’s renovation, creativeness, and differences in attracting investment and developing the economy, it has successfully created its own brand.

At present, Dong Thap is focusing on restructuring its agricultural sector, in which its mindset shifts from agricultural production to the agricultural economy. Its business environment has gradually improved, paving the way for the increasing development of the business community. The province has also witnessed a widespread startup movement.

A sports exchange programme was held between Viet Nam’s southern province of Dong Thap and Cambodia’s south-eastern province of Prey Veng.

Reportedly, a number of “Made in Dong Thap” industrial, agricultural and travel products are well known among individuals and groups inside and outside Viet Nam. The provincial tourism sector’s motto “Dong Thap, as pure as the soul of the lotus”, its agricultural sector’s message “Dong Thap’s agriculture - Green values from green potentials”, and other high-tech agricultural products and specific tourism services have contributed to popularizing the province’s image to the entire country of Viet Nam and international friends as well.

In spite of dividing agricultural production into separate and independent fields, Dong Thap considers its agriculture the fulcrum of the local economy to supply raw materials to the processing industry, helping create new products with high added value and providing momentum for tourism development, contributing to gradually forming a value chain linkage in this sector.

Up to now, an array of the province’s districts has reaped success in upholding strengths in the cultivation of fruits, floriculture, aquatic products, and trade villages in association with developing community-based tourism, making a contribution to improving local residents’ incomes.

In 2020, Dong Thap recorded the revenue of agro-forestry-aquatic products at 44,098 billion VNA, an increase of 1,013 billion VND or equivalent to 2.35% in comparison with the previous year.

Attractive investment encouragement policies

Apart from the Central government’s policies, the Dong Thap provincial People’s Committee issued a series of regulations to facilitate investment in agriculture, education and training, vocational training, healthcare, culture, sports, environment, rural clean water projects, tourism, and science and technology. Investors will be presented with the most preferential treatment under Viet Nam’s laws.

When investors decide to pour money into Dong Thap, they will receive wholehearted assistance from groups of local specialists, from filing procedures for investment preparation to addressing impediments during their operations in the province.

Until now, Dong Thap has built up an infrastructure system for transportation and logistics; finished planning appropriate land used for border gate economic zones, economic clusters, and industrial parks according to different periods of time; providing lower price of industrial land rents than other localities nationwide; completed planning urban land for commerce and service with reasonable lease deals, to name but a few. These above-mentioned features are competitive advantages for the province to attract investors.

In addition, Dong Thap has been making efforts to build a green agricultural sector with “Make in Dong Thap” products; steering its agricultural economy towards sustainable and commodity-based production models, increasing technology adoption, and significantly improving production efficiency, crop yield, and product quality; well responding to the Government’s new-style rural area building program; promoting human resources in agriculture and fostering farmers’ living standards; facilitating business operations and encouraging startup movement; and building the business culture and examples of outstanding businesspersons.

Go Thap relic area, Dong Thap province.

The province also has abundant human resources. Most of them are hard-working, smart, dynamic, and creative while always showing their aspiration for working and devoting themselves to the development of their hometown. As a result, they reassured investors about running the business in Dong Thap.

Moreover, Dong Thap is implementing projects to build models of smart villages, smart cities, and a friendly, creative and reformative working environment, contributing to creating a driving force for the local economy.

The province also attaches importance to building economic zones to influence urban areas along the shared borderline, whereby they will influence the development of the province’s northern part in such fields as national defence, social order and security.

Dong Thap has bettered its infrastructure and called upon more investment capital into its seven border gates, including two international ones Thuong Phuoc (in Hong Ngu district) and Dinh Ba (in Tan Hong district), along the 48.7km border with Cambodia.

Thanks to these aforementioned advantages and efforts, Dong Thap has witnessed active cooperation in trade-commerce and investment with an array of foreign markets, such as the European Union (EU), China, Russia, the United States of America, and Cambodia, despite facing difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, Dong Thap’s import-export turnover reached around 1,333 million USD, including 1,041.18 million USD in exports, excluding temporary import and re-export goods, and 291.81 million in imports.

In the first nine months of this year, import and export performance earned the province 1,063 million USD; in which, 762.12 million USD was from exports, excluding temporary import and re-export goods, and 300.98 million USD from imports. The province’s main exports are aquatic products, rice, garments and textiles, and footwear, to name but a few.

Looking towards its position of strength, Dong Thap still has a large geo-space to lure investment. Thus, it is necessary for the province to further boost administrative reforms; flexibly make full use of the Party, State and Government’s policies and guidelines to benefit businesses; create all favorable conditions for investors to fulfil administrative formalities as soon as possible, easy access to available capital, while well-preparing infrastructure to facilitate investors’ business operations in the province... contributing to continue to heighten the “weight” of the brand name of Dong Thap in the eyes of investors.