Local provincial keeps stern treatment for pending coastal tourism projects

VietNamNet Bridge – Gone are the days when the local provincial try to attract tourism projects at any costs. They have become much choosier in selecting investors and approving projects.

A lot of investors have been rushing to Binh Dinh and Binh Thuan provinces to register resort and tourism complex projects on the coastal areas. Even the investors, who do not have financial capability, also registered projects to get land allocated. 

Binh Dinh has a 134 kilometer coastal line and a lot of beautiful landscapes which are the wonderful conditions for developing tourism and entertainment services. 

In order to take full advantage of the heaven-sent conditions, the provincial authorities built a coastal road that links Hoai Nhon district and Quy Nhon City. They hope that the Nhon Hoi Economic Zone, the wonderful natural conditions and the favorable transport infrastructure, will facilitate the strong development of the tourism industry. 

Therefore, it is understandable why investors have been flocking to the central province. To date, investors have registered 9 tourism projects on the costal areas with the total registered capital of 15,402 billion dong.

However, the provincial authorities are considering revoking investment licenses from the investors who really do not have capability to implement projects.

The Nhon Hoi trade, service and tourism complex project, licensed in November 2006, remains a “pending” project.

At first, the project was expected to cover an area of 74.6 hectares, but later, the project’s area has been raised to 94 hectares. The 181.2 billion dong project was to be implemented in 2007-2012. To date, 71.16 hectares of “clean land” (the land ready for construction after the site clearance work completed) have been allocated to the investor. By May 2011, the total construction work volume has reached 82.2 billion dong.

However, according to the provincial authorities, though the project is located on an advantageous position, the scale and the architecture of the project do not commensurate with the “golden land” position. Meanwhile, the investor proves to be unprofessional and does not follow the current laws in the investment.

Rainbow Resort project also got the investment license five years ago, in December 2006, but no considerable improvement has been made so far. The 390 billion dong project, which was expected to cover an area of 56 hectares and implemented during five years, from 2009 to 2014, has been going too slowly. To date, the value of the construction works had been 5.58 billion dong only.

The investor has been also found out as unprofessional, who cannot fulfill his commitments.

Similarly, the projects on Vinh Hoi tourism complex and resort, Linh Phong pagoda eco-tourism project, Hai Giang tourism complex all have been going very slowly due to the problems in the site clearance. The Emerald of Vietnam project developed by ALT tourism development company has made no move over the last year, since the investor still needs to negotiate with the South Korean Gold Star on the mine disarming works in 2011.

The 1840 billion dong project on developing a high grade resort developed by the Binh Dinh Youth Company, which was expected to be implemented in 2009-2018, also has been going very slowly with only 14.6 billion dong worth of works’ value has been fulfilled. The problem is that the investor is now still busy exploiting titanium for profit.

Ho Quoc Dung, Deputy Chair of the Binh Dinh provincial people’s committee has admitted on Tin Tuc newspaper that the projects have been going too slowly, due to many reasons. Most of the investors still lack determination to implement projects. Some of them are unprofessional, while others ignore the regulations on environment protection. Especially, some projects have been pending for a long time after the investor finished the titanium exploitation.

Dung has emphasized that the local authorities will revoke licenses from the incapable investors in order to give opportunities to really capable investors.

Meanwhile, the authorities of the Binh Thuan province have stated that they will only accept the projects which cover an area of five hectares at least and encourage 3-star and higher-quality projects. 

The decision has been released in order to choose the best investors for the real estate tourism projects in the province and prevent the long coastal areas from being split into small pieces.

Ngo Minh Chinh, Director of the Binh Thuan provincial Department for Culture, Sport and Tourism said on Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon that the locality is seeking the investors for central marine sports complexes, yachting, formula 1 racing cars, or balloon business services.

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