Da Lat is still a poetic, fascinating city with hills, winding roads, and ancient moss-grown villas loom under the shadow of pine trees. The city is now is more and more prosperous and looking forward to be a world-class city
Compared to some hundreds of hotels and rest hotels ten years ago, Da Lat now has 700 hotels with over 50 one-to five-star hotels, satisfying residence demand for over 30,000 tourists. To this end, the city has invested tens of billion dong in developing infrastructure in the past seven years.
Da Lat now makes steady advances in socioeconomic field. Specifically, in 2007, the city saw economic growth rate of 17 per cent; export turnover of USD 23 million, a rise of 21 per cent against 2006; GDP growth rate of over VND 13 million. Up to 97 per cent of local households now have access to clean water. As of late 2007, the city’s poverty rate under new criterion was only 3.24 per cent while the ratio of malnourished children was 11.5 per cent. Basically, Da Lat eliminated shelters and cottages for ethnic minorities in the city with help of domestic and foreign individuals and governmental institutions and the national poverty reduction program 134. The city has also spent hundreds of billion dong constructing clean water works, schools, and health centres. Da Lat, moreover, has provides livestock breeding assistance projects to help ethnic people in local Ta Nung commune and Manglin hamlet develop economy and stabilise their lives, contributing a part to the city’s poverty reduction target set.
Mr. Doan Van Kiet, the chairman of Da Lat People’s Committee, said “the year of 2008 marks the 115th anniversary of the city’s establishment and development. In order to create momentums to boost socioeconomic development in the coming time, the city’s government has mobilised human sources to be worthy of a tourism and resort centre in Viet Nam in particular and in the world in general. Besides, Da Lat will build civilisation in the city’s business by the provincial budget. The city now has nine projects, of which, work started on the Ba Ho Chuc bridge, 3/2 bridge, Nguyen Van Cu road upgraded project, leisure centre, Ba Huyen Thanh Quan road, centre square, market, eating and drinking night market”.
Da Lat is a township of Lam Dong Province. The Viet Nam government and authorities in Lam Dong Province have always interested in the city in the past 115 years to develop it become the international tourism city. In order to pursue urban civilisation target, strengthen administrative reform for celebration of the 115th anniversary of the city’s establishment and development, the city has focused on completing seven major missions and eight key projects in 2008 to boost development in high-tech agriculture as well as high-quality tourism.
Regarding high-quality tourism, in 2008, the city has set a target to obtain an average tourism-service growth rate of between 17 percent and 18 percent per year, striving to see a ratio of 73-74 percent in tourism-service structure by 2010. Da Lat is also striving to attract 2 million tourists in 2008, up 12 percent against 2007, with a rise of 10 per cent of foreign tourists, and an average residence of between 2.6 days and 2.8 days, the number of residence trading units that are granted “star” of 30 per cent of total units; diversify and build more forms of tourism such as ecotourism, conferences, shopping areas, healthcares, leisure centres, and special tourism.
Regarding high-tech agriculture, the city targets to transfer agricultural production structure, develop flower, vegetable, tea relating to tourism services and exports; gain an annually average growth rate of 10-11 percent; transfer cultivated crop structure throughout increasing surface of high value crops; apply advanced technologies in a bid to raise products’ value; associate between tourism and agriculture to develop more ecotourism locations; invest technologies in the post-harvest in an effort to hike products’ value for exports; train the staff with skilled knowledge of high-tech agricultural production.
Ngoc Huong
Vietnamese
