LookAtVietnam – Prodded by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Hanoi has considerably scaled back plans for golf course construction.

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The Hanoi authorities recently reviewed 15 golf course projects, rejected ten, and authorized five to go forward. Now the Prime Minister has instructed Hanoi to cancel one more, an 18-hole golf course project in the Hoa Lac Hi-tech Project near Son Tay northwest of central Hanoi that was still in the planning stage.

The city alreadly has four operating golf courses: Van Tri, Dong Mo, Hanoi and Van Son Lake. Only four more are now authorized: Soc Son, Long Bien Quan Son and Tan Vien.

The PM has also instructed the Ministry of Planning and Investment to finalise a national plan for golf course development to 2020, for review at an upcoming cabinet meeting. The radical pruning of golf course proposals responds to widespread concern that, once the right of approval for development projects was delegated to local authorities, the latter proceeded to chart far more facilities than would be needed to meet demand. Critics, including prominent legislators, decried the wholesale conversion of prime agricultural land into upscale golf course development.

The golf course inside Hanoi’s Tan Vien international tourist site is controversial. The proposed site would sprawl over 1204 hectares, including 730 hectares of ponds and lakes, 183 hectares of islands in Suoi Hai Lake and 291.5 hectares of lake shore. However, Hanoi will only permit the implementation of the first phase, said the vice chief of the office of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Van Thinh.

This project is divided into two phases. In the first phase, which will go forward, an 18-hole golf course, hotels, clubs and villas are scheduled to be built on on almost all the islands in Suoi Hai Lake. In the second phase, now cancelled, another golf course, clubs, hotels and entertainment zone was to be built on 1050 hectares of land that now include chicken farms, the Mondaca beef breeding farm, and the surface of Suoi Hai Lake.

The city’s point of view in building golf courses is that their construction must be based on the city’s economic and social development plan and be appropriate to the policy on cooking security.

Golf course projects are considered a conditional investment field and don’t enjoy investment incentives.

Cao Nhat