Power assured during dry season
Power supply will meet the anticipated surge in demand during the dry season this year, said Dang Huy Cuong, director of the Electricity Regulatory Authority of Viet Nam.
Though developing at a rapid pace, the industrial clusters around Vietnam have yielded little economic effectiveness with their failing to lure investors, experts said at a conference yesterday.
At the joint conference on industrial cluster development held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) and the United Nation Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Hanoi, Le Xuan Ba, head of CIEM, said industrial cluster is defined as a zone spanning less than 50 hectares that is particularly planned for industrial development.
An area larger than 50 hectares will be considered an industrial zone, he said, adding however that since such definition is not widely known, the legal framework regarding the industrial cluster is still unclear.
“Thus, developers of the industrial clusters do not enjoy incentives as do the industrial parks developers,” Ba was quoted by the Saigon Times daily as saying.
Doctor Tran Kim Hao from CIEM said Vietnam is currently home to 1,872 planned industrial clusters, spanning a total of more than 76,000 hectares.
Of these, he said, 918 clusters have become operational, but have managed to lease only 26.4 percent of the 40,600-hectare area.
“We have lost many lands zoned for agricultural production to give place to the mushrooming industrial clusters, but have failed to make good use of them,” Hao said.
Nicola Coniglio, an UNIDO expert, stated that Vietnam should select some clusters for prioritizing development, rather than haphazardly spreading investment on all of them as it is doing.
“The role of the government and local authorities of the localities where the industrial clusters are located in the development of these industrial clustering should also be identified,” he added.
The large number of industrial clusters with little economic effectiveness has again raised an alarming bell on Vietnam’s inefficient public spending.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the country needs to invest an additional sum of more than VND100 trillion (US$4.8 billion) on developing infrastructures for the industrial clusters in the next five years.