Promoting Investment into Advantageous Fields

 

Mr Cam Ngoc Minh, Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, said, with the support of the central government and efforts of the province, Son La basically completed infrastructure construction to ensure essential social and business demands. To boost up the economic development and improve people's living standards, the province always provides favourable conditions and creates an open investment environment for domestic and foreign businesses and investors to explore and survey investment environment and carry out projects.

 

Son La has an area of 14,172 square kilometres, the third largest by area among 63 provinces and cities in the country, accounting for 4.28 percent of the natural area of the country and 37.88 percent of the area of the Northwest. The area of mountains and hills is vast and soil is fertile. Cultivation layers are thick and favourable for increasing intensive farming and enhancing and crop productivity. Son La has great potential for agricultural development and favourable conditions for developing large-scaled concentrated material production zones. Many different sub-climate zones are also an advantage to develop and diversify characteristic agricultural products. Two major plateaux, Moc Chau and Na San, have fertile soil and good conditions for growing cash crops like tea, sugarcane, coffee, rubber, fruit trees, vegetables and temperate medicinal plants. These areas also have favourable conditions for developing grazing cattle on a large scale, depending on ecozones. Besides, it serves as the centre between Hanoi-Hoa Binh with Dien Bien-Lai Chau on National Road 6, links to Thanh Hoa province with National Road 15, and connects to Phu Tho province with the Da River. The province has two border gates, Long Sap and Chieng Khuong, with Laos. Son La is a transit point for tourism itineraries between Hanoi with the Northwest and Laos.

 

Mr Cam Ngoc Minh said, we have so far basically completed infrastructure construction and services to ensure basic needs of social life and serve investing activities. Son La has many favourable conditions to attract investors like transport systems, infrastructure, power supply, which are ready for enterprises to build and connect their power and infrastructure works for their projects. Before regional and international integration tendency, along with strong socioeconomic development, the province hopes domestic and foreign investors will come, explore investment and business opportunities and carry out their investment projects to utilise existing resources and promote local potential and strengths. In addition to general investment policies stipulated by the State, the province has introduced its own policies to draw investors. The province issued Resolution 258/2008/NQ-HDND dated December 12, 2008 on cattle development in the 2009-2015 period; Resolution 363/2011/NQ-HDND dated March 18, 2011 on rubber tree development; Resolution 88/2014/NQ- HDND dated September 17, 2014 on encourage of enterprises and cooperatives to invest in agriculture and rural development in the period from 2015 to 2020. Besides, the province issued some policies to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs). As for Moc Chau tourism, apart from the abovementioned priority policies, Son La province researched and proposed specific mechanisms and policies for Moc Chau national tourism zone to be granted incentives applied to economic zones and export processing zones. The proposals have been submitted to the Prime Minister for consideration and decision. Particularly, investors developing projects in Moc Chau national tourism zone will be granted special priorities. As for big projects with strong effect on the development of the region and the province, Son La is willing and ready to report to the Government for specific policies for those projects. Furthermore, the province also supports investors when they carry out their projects. The provincial government always stands ready to listen to feedbacks and complaints from investors to have best solutions to emerging issues, said Cam Ngoc Minh before the opening of the Son La Investment Promotion Conference on January 31, 2015.