Vietnam offers preferential and favourable conditions for private investors in agriculture, affirmed Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat.
Minister Phat made the statement at a round-table talk on Public Private Partnerships (PPP) entitled “Creating new opportunities for private investment in agriculture” held in Hanoi on Nov. 11.
The Vietnamese Government has issued a list of 28 fields that will enjoy preferential treatment, he said, adding that the list includes cultivation and breeding, seafood, forestry, salt development, agricultural mechanisation as well as infrastructure and human resource development.
Many policies have been carried out to encourage investment in rural agriculture, including exemption or reduction in land use fees by 70 percent, helping small businesses in human resource training and exempting them from import taxes on materials used to produce varieties of cattle.
Dang Xuan Quang from the Ministry of Planning and Investment said that the Prime Minister has approved a PPP model submitted by his ministry. The new investment model will help mobilise domestic and foreign private sources in various fields, including agriculture, Quang said.
Vietnam is known as an agricultural nation with its agro-forestry and fisheries acreage of 24.7 million ha, making up 74.5 percent of the country’s natural land.
Agriculture has brought the major income to rural families in Vietnam. Up to 68 percent out of 70 percent of rural people live mainly on agro-forestry and fisheries production.
Vietnam ’s agriculture recorded an annual average growth of five percent in production value and around 4 percent in GDP during the 1998-2008 period.
