Five days after a tense question and answer session in the National Assembly, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has reiterated that only ten, provinces have leased forest tracts to foreign investors.
Minister of Agriculture Cao Duc Phat was assailed by deputies on June 11 who demanded to know why MARD had allowed sensitive forest areas foreign investors, posing problems for national defence and security. A particular point at issue was discrepancies between MARD’s data and data compiled by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and the NA’s own Committee for Defence and Security.
The MARD report, signed by Phat, said that the ministry has carefully reviewed its data and compared it with data from MPI and the Assembly committee’s report. All of the 18 provinces mentioned in the committee report have foreign investors, MARD confirmed, but only ten provinces have actually leased forest land to foreign investors.
The ten provinces are Lang Son, Cao Bang, Quang Ninh, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Nam, Binh Dinh, Kon Tum, Khanh Hoa and Binh Duong.
Four of the eight remaining provinces (Thanh Hoa, Thua Thien-Hue city, Da Nang and Dong Nai) have licenced foreign investors to build forest products processing factories. Two others (Lam Dong and Binh Thuan) have permitted foreign investors to implement tea, flower, tree growing and eco-tourism projects.
Yen Bai province hasn’t leased forest; there is only a Thai investor who produces stone paintings. Hoa Binh province licenced two foreign firms but it has since revoked the investment licence of the Grandsource Forestry Investment and Development Co., Ltd (Brunei) because this firm didn’t carry out its project. The second foreign firm, Giai Hoa Industry JS Company (Taiwan), didn’t lease forest in Hoa Binh but rather in Khanh Hoa province.
Explaining other discrepancies in the data related to forest leasing, MARD said that Nghe An province at first licenced InnovGreen (Hong Kong) to grow 70,000 hectares of forest but after analyzing the overlap with security and defense zones, the province approved only 16,840 hectares of the area that Innov Green requested, or 53,150 hectares less than was reported by the NA’s Defence and Security Committee.
The remaining gap of 39,860 hectares between the MARD’s statistics and the NA’s Defence and Security Committee’s report involves tracts in eight provinces. In some cases, foreign investors were granted investment licences, not to establish plantations but to build forestry processing factories and other projects. In other cases, investment licences were revoked. For example, the Thanh Hoa province peoples’ committee originally issued InnovGreen a license to grow 21,000 hectares of forest but actually it was only granted 15 hectares of land to build a forest products processing factory in Nghi Son 1 Industrial Zone.
MARD reaffirmed that at this moment, only ten provinces have issued forest plantation development licences to foreign investors, totaling 305,353 hectares.
PV
