Five years have passed since the day Vietnam put forward the plan on building and developing Phu Quoc Island into a large global tourism and trade exchange centre. But it seems that nothing considerable has been accomplished yet.

However, only four of the licenced projects have become operational, namely Berjaya Long Beach, Veranda, Cataco and Miramar resorts.

Eighty-eight projects of the said 174 projects which have got agreement in principle have not followed stipulated investment procedures for many reasons.

The projects registered by big names including Swiss Tructsse in cooperation with Vietnam’s Vinaconex (the Euro2 billion project on finance and tourism centre), the US-based Rockingham Group (the $1 billion high-grade tourism and entertainment complex), Starbay Veitnam ($1.8 billion Starbay resort complex) have not moved farther than asking for land.

Earning money from project trading

Hearing about the great potentials of Phu Quoc Island, a lot of people have rushed to lobby to get the right for investment in projects and rushed to commit fraud, totalling several billion dong.

Trinh Van Trung, former Head of the Economics Division under the Kien Giang People’s Committee, was arrested after reportedly receiving 500 million dong from Xa Huong Company and promising to allocate forest land to the company for a tourism project.

Phu Quoc Island

Ngoc promised to help Luc with the procedures in the project’s investment, but then ran off with 1.2 billion dong worth of Luc’s money.

A lot of government officials have been selling state-owned land and forest land as their own. The police are now investigating a case in Ham Ninh commune, in which local authorities are accused of selling state land to officials.

No one questions the potential of Phu Quoc Island, but even a paradise can’t be built in a day.

VietNamNet/TP