At the advent of the Year of the Horse 2014, Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mr Dam Van Bong, Chairman of Ha Giang Provincial People's Committee, on the province's development achievements and orientations. Thanh Nga reports.
What solutions has Ha Giang province taken to enhance its provincial competitiveness index (PCI) rating?
Like other localities in the country, Ha Giang province has endeavoured to carry out target programmes to reduce poverty, speed up public administration reform, develop economy, create development motivation, and attract investment capital. In 2013, the province reviewed and generalised administrative procedures applied at decentralised provincial and district public administrative centres to shorten required time for procedural settlement and accelerate e-government construction to reduce administrative procedures and expenses and boost the transparency of documents. Thereby, the province has gradually raised the awareness of public administrative agencies and improved the professional service of civil servants. It has adopted the single-window mechanism to help investors to reduce the time for handling administrative procedures and enhance the service quality of civil officials and servants. Together with that, the province has also reviewed and adjusted policies, tax incentives, industrial sites, socioeconomic development planning, and land-use planning to help businesses and investors access information and investment options. The province has met, discussed and listened to feedback from enterprises to have effective changes to policies. Investors have been allowed to settle investment procedures in accordance with the single-window mechanism at the Ha Giang province Investment Consulting and Promotion Centre. This new mechanism has reduced the time for the task by a third. The province has also focused on introducing its investment and business environment and investment support policies, restructuring infrastructure systems to attract more investors, and investing to build infrastructure systems in economic and industrial zones in the form of BOT and BT.
Ha Giang has abundant labour resources and the educational level of the people has been gradually improved. We are concentrating on upgrading and expanding training facilities to meet human resources demand for local employment demand. Then, the province will effectively implement potential and advantage exploitation projects to create breakthroughs in economic growth and sustainable development; strive to maintain annual GDP growth; promote economic restructuring towards commercialised commodity production, industrialisation and modernisation; and apply advanced science and technology, develop foreign economic relations, raise people’s living standards, and sustain poverty reduction.
Ha Giang is appreciated for the effective use of ODA capital in recent years. Would you be kind enough to share something about this?
In recent years, the Government has implemented many programmes and projects in the province, including poverty reduction projects, social and economic development projects for Ha Giang province, national target programmes, Programme 134, Programme 135, Resolution 30a on rapid and sustainable poverty reduction support for 62 poorest districts, and programmes and projects funded by the international donors like the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Foundation for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Therefore, in recent years, Ha Giang has significant changes in essential infrastructure like transport and irrigation systems, response to climate change, health, education, agricultural and rural development combined with poverty alleviation, economic development, value -added industrial – construction production, and increased revenue for local budgets.
However, Ha Giang is still facing numerous challenges. Currently the province has the six poorest districts in the country. People’s access to health – education services is limited, production is small and segmented, insufficient production infrastructure is a challenge for the local socio-economic development process. To have development investment resources to tap local potentials and advantages, the Provincial People’s Committee has directed the Board in charge of mobilising, managing and utilising ODA capital to build the list of projects in need of ODA capital and preferential loans in Ha Giang province in the 2014 – 2016 period and beyond, expressing with the desire and expectation to be shared and supported by the Government, ministries, agencies, international organisations and donors for poverty alleviation, rapid and sustainable socioeconomic development.
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Đăng ký: VietNam News