Decision No. 206/QD-TTg dated February 02, 2016 of the Prime Minister on approving the master plan on socio-economic development of Ha Giang province through 2020, with a vision toward 2030

DECISION

Approving the master plan on socio-economic development of Ha Giang province through 2020, with a vision toward 2030[1]

THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the June 19, 2015 Law on Organization of the Government;

Pursuant to the Government’s Decree No. 92/2006/ND-CP of September 7, 2006, on the elaboration, approval and management of socio-economic development master plans; and Decree No. 04/2008/ND-CP of January 11, 2008, amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 92/2006/ND-CP;

At the proposal of the Chairperson of the People’s Committee of Ha Giang province,

DECIDES:

Article 1:To approve the master plan on socio-economic development of Ha Giang province through 2020, with a vision toward 2030 (below referred to as the master plan), with the following principal contents:

I. DEVELOPMENT VIEWPOINTS

1. The master plan must comply with the national socio-economic development strategy, the master plan on socio-economic development in the northern midland and mountainous region, and must be consistent with sectoral master plans, ensure the close linkage and cooperation among areas in the province, between the province and other localities across the country, especially those along the corridors, and in pace with the international economic integration process.

2. To bring into play the province’s internal resources in addition to the central government’s investment and support and the attraction of other resources for fast development of advantageous sectors in the province and each of its sub-regions. Along with stable and sustainable development, the province needs breakthroughs and development-driving areas drawing on its comparative advantages in natural resources and tourism.

3. To closely combine economic and socio-cultural development; to attach importance to the development of human resources, especially ethnic minority staff; to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty and improve the people’s living conditions; to gradually narrow the gap in living conditions among areas in the province; to uphold and preserve national cultural identity and increase the people’s knowledge; to support the development of difficulty-stricken areas, ensuring social justice; to effectively protect the natural environment for sustainable development.

4. To closely combine economic and socio-cultural development with national defense and security maintenance and local security consolidation. To maintain good ties with neighboring border provinces. To effectively perform national defense and security tasks, safeguarding the borderline in a way suitable to the features of an important locality in the process of deep and wide integration in regional and global economies; to build a border of peace, stability and long-term cooperation with China’s Guangxi and Yunnan provinces.

II. DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES

1. General objectives

To develop and restructure the economy toward modernization and industrialization based on advantages of natural resources, geographical position, historical and social conditions that is operated based on administrative reform toward openness. To improve the people’s material life and raise the average per-capita income to above the average level in the region and narrow the gap with the country’s average level; to maintain and develop the people’s spiritual life based on the multi-national culture; to maintain national defense and security and social order and consolidate and firmly improve the people’s living environment.

2. Specific targets through 2020

a/ Economic targets:

- The average economic growth rate will be around 7.5%/year in the 2016-2020 period; the average per-capita income will reach around VND 30 million; import-export turnover will reach USD 600 million; the local budget collection compared with GDP will increase to 15% by 2020.

- Economic structure: The agricultural sector will make up 33%, the industry-construction sector, 29%, and the services sector, 38%.

b/ Cultural and social targets:

- To generate jobs for 15,000-16,000 people per year; the rate of trained workers will be 60% by 2020.

- The natural population growth rate will be around 1.4% by 2020; the rate of poor households will decrease to below 5% by 2020 or an average of 3-5%/year.

- To draw more than 99% of children aged 3-5 years to kindergartens; and more than 99% of children aged 6-14 to schools; to sustainably maintain the universalization of lower secondary education; the rate of upper secondary students will surpass 30% by 2030, and the rate of vocational training, collegial and university students will be 60% by 2020.

- The rate of communes meeting national health standards will be 100%; the numbers of patient beds and doctors will be over 50 and 8.8 per 10,000 people, respectively; more than 98% of under-one children will be fully vaccinated; to reduce the malnutrition rate among under-five children to below 18% by 2020.

- Sixty percent of communes and townships will have standard cultural houses; 65% of hamlets, villages and street quarters will be awarded the Culture Village title; 25% of communes will attain the new countryside cultural standards; and 50% of wards and townships will reach urban civilization standards.

c/ Environmental targets:

- The forest coverage rate will be 60% by 2020 and will be maintained in the following years, 80% of rural population will have access to clean water and the rate of rural households with sanitary latrines will be 60% by 2020.

- By 2020, all solid waste will be collected and treated; 85% of rural households will have access to the national power grid.

3. Vision toward 2030

- The average economic growth rate will be around 8.5%/year in the 2021-2025 period and around 9.5%/year in the 2025-2030 period. The average per-capita GDP will reach around VND 55 million by 2025 and VND 80 million by 2030; import-export turnover will reach USD 900 million by 2025 and between USD 1.5-2 billion by 2030; the local budget collection compared with GDP will increase to 17% by 2025 and to 20% by 2030. Regarding economic structure, the proportion of the agricultural sector will be 25.2%, that of the industry-construction sector, 33.5%, and that of the services sector, 41.3%.

- The natural population growth rate will be around 1.25% by 2025 and 1.11% by 2030. The rate of upper secondary students will surpass 50% by 2030 and the rate of vocational training, collegial and university students will be 75-80% by 2030. To generate jobs for around 18,000 people per year; and the rate of trained workers will be 75% by 2025 and over 85% by 2030.

- To maintain the forest coverage rate of 60%, the rate of rural population using clean water will be 85% by 2025 and over 90% by 2030; the number of rural households with sanitary latrines will be 65% by 2025 and more than 70% by 2030. By 2030, all households will have access to the national power grid.

III. ORIENTATIONS FOR SECTORAL DEVELOPMENT

1. Agriculture and forestry development:

- To comprehensively develop agriculture and forestry toward commodity production associated with the process of agricultural and rural industrialization and modernization; to attain the growth rate of 5.5-6% in the 2016-2020 period and 6-7% in the 2021-2030 period.

- Agriculture: To speed up intensive farming for higher yield, put new high-yield, high-quality and high-effectiveness varieties into production; to develop material zones associated with processing major farm products with competitive edge in the market, focusing on the development of wet rice and hybrid maize; to concentrate on the development of plants suitable to the province’s conditions such as tea, medicinal plants, soya bean, groundnut, rose and vegetables; to continue developing fruit trees like orange, tangerine, mango, pear, plum and seedless persimmon in association with consumption markets.

- Animal raising: To focus investment on developing animal raising based on each area’s advantages, step by step turn animal raising into a major agricultural production activity.

- Forestry: To develop forestry toward commodity-based production with focuses and priorities, ensure a rational structure among production, protection and special-use forests; to effectively implement the forest protection and development project in four mountainous districts and develop material forest areas in Bac Quang, Quang Binh, Vi Xuyen, Bac Me, Hoang Su Phi and Xin Man.

- Medicinal plants: To become the biggest northeastern medicinal plant production zone combined with intensive processing of chemical-free medicinal plants with their own trademarks. To conserve six nature reserves covering more than 49,500 hectares with 51 endangered precious and rare medicinal plant species. The acreage under medicinal plants will reach around 19,419 hectares by 2020 and 22,000 hectares by 2025.

2. Industry-construction development

- To attain an average industry-construction growth rate of 10.8% by 2020 in which industry will grow 13.8%/year and construction, 7.4%/year. Some major industries will be developed as follows:

- Mining and mineral processing: To rationally exploit and use minerals associated with processing facilities in order to provide a number of essential materials and fuels to production in and outside the province. To focus on exploring and assessing mineral reserves, and study and make detail assessments of major mineral deposits such as iron ore, manganese ore and lead-zinc ore; to invest in technological renewal and raise the mechanization level at small production establishments to minimize loss of natural resources and protect the eco-environment.

Major minerals with mining prospects include iron ore, manganese ore, lead-zinc ore and bauxite mines.

- Agricultural and forest product and food processing: To concentrate on timber processing with an annual capacity of 20,000 m³ of basic timber products for construction, household wood products, wooden packages, floorboard and interior products from artificial wood planks; tea processing with an annual capacity of around 13,000 tons; beef processing in four mountainous districts; and medicinal plant processing in line with the development of the province’s material zones.

- Construction material production: To expand production scale and renew technologies so as to meet provincial and regional markets’ demand for construction materials. Major products will be cement, tunnel brick, non-baked brick, stone, sand, gravel, roofing tile and materials, concrete components.

- Mechanics, assembling and repair service will be developed in the direction of mechanical repair, welding and manufacturing of farm tools and small seed, tuber and fruit processing equipment, harvest and post-harvest preservation equipment, and soil preparation equipment in farming. To invest in renewing technologies for high-quality product and part assembling; to bring into play the manufacturing capacity and increase the investment efficiency of the province’s existing automobile assembly plants.

- Handicraft and rural industry development: To restore and upgrade technologies of traditional handicrafts imbued with ethnic culture such as flaxcloth and brocade weaving, making of traditional costumes of ethnic groups, and rattan and bamboo products; to develop crafts and establish crafts associations, facilitating the expansion of the connection of production, consumption and market development as well as expanding and increasing the value of the export of handicraft and fine arts products; each district will have 3-4 craft villages by 2020.

- Building and development of industrial parks and clusters: To plan in detail and build industrial parks and clusters, build infrastructure for and expand industrial and service establishments, and attract investors to carry out production activities in the 254-hectare Binh Vang industrial park. To complete site clearance, build infrastructure and continue calling for investment in Binh Vang industrial park and Nam Quang industrial cluster under the approved plan.

3. Trade and service development

- To develop services with focus on trade, tourism and cross-border economic development toward the diversification of types of services to serve production and people’s livelihood, expand trades and generate jobs for local people, turning services into the province’s important economic sector. To attain a growth rate of 12-13%/year in the 2016-2020 period.

- Trade: To combine trade and service development and the planning of industrial parks and clusters, tourist zones and new urban centers for comprehensive and sustainable development. To combine traditional trade development and investment in building a civilized and modern trade network of trade centers and supermarkets like trade centers in Ha Giang city, Vi Xuyen district and Bac Quang district. To complete the system of markets in townships, wards, and communes under planning to satisfy residents’ production and consumption demands. To develop the system of supermarkets and trade centers in line with the urban plan, diversify business types, scales and methods.

- Border-gate economy: To concentrate on developing the Thanh Thuy international border-gate economic zone.

- Tourism: To focus on developing ecological, cultural and community-based tourism to take advantage and bring into play the value of natural resources and specific historical and cultural relics of ethnic minorities in the province. Ha Giang tourism will become an important component in the service sector by 2020, creating a pre-condition for tourism to become an industry holding an important role in the provincial economy with synchronous physical and technical foundations and competitive high-quality, diversified and environment-friendly products with trademarks and Ha Giang cultural identity, making Ha Giang one of the key tourist localities in the region and the country.

- Other services: To synchronously develop other services such as finance, banking, insurance, transport, information, post, technical consultation, technology transfer and other social services; to diversify forms of and economic sectors participating in goods transport by road and waterway; to develop various forms of public transport such as taxi and bus; to expand the network of services for rural production, helping farmers promote commodity production and rural economic restructuring.

4. Social fields

a/ Education and training:

- To comprehensively develop education and training, regarding education and training as the primary task to improve people’s knowledge and build a qualified workforce meeting future development requirements. To pay attention to making investment in building physical foundations and procuring equipment for schools at all levels, meeting teaching and learning requirements; to step up the application of information technology to school management and teaching; to diversify types of vocational education and training. By 2020, 30% of schools will meet national education standards and teachers at all levels will meet prescribed standards; to develop the training network under the approved plan.

b/ Community healthcare:

- To develop a modern and sustainable health system; to combine specialized and general medicine, harmoniously combine disease prevention and physical rehabilitation, and traditional medicine and modern medicine.  To upgrade the provincial general hospital to have 600 beds, the tuberculosis and lung disease hospital, the convalescence-physical rehabilitation hospital, the provincial traditional pharmacy-medicine hospital and the eye hospital, and build a new obstetrics and pediatrics hospital.

c/ Culture, sports and physical training:

- To further speed up the conservation, inheritance and upholding of fine values of ethnic culture in line with the cultural development strategy through 2020.

- To develop sports and physical training among the people, promote school sports and physical training activities. To focus investment on improving the quality of some traditional sports that are local strengths such as badminton, crossbow shooting, tug-of-stick, chess and table tennis.

- To invest in building physical foundations and playing grounds in districts, cities, communes, wards and residential quarters. To upgrade the Physical Training and Sports Competition Center into the provincial Sports Complex; to build adequate basic sports and physical training facilities in districts, towns and cities such as stadiums, gyms and competition halls and swimming pools.

d/ Employment, hunger eradication and poverty reduction and social security:

- To fully implement policies for poor households and ethnic minorities with special attention to ethnic minorities living in border, remote and deep-lying areas.

- To improve the quality and effectiveness of vocational training together with job generation; by 2020, to slash the urban unemployment rate to below 2%; to increase the rural employment rate to 87%.

dd/ Science and technology development:

- To step up technology development, application and transfer in all social fields. To select and apply cutting-edge techniques and technologies in line with the provincial socio-economic development master plan such as prioritizing projects on restructuring plant varieties and animal breeds toward high productivity, quality, food safety and efficiency and applying new advanced technologies to preservation and processing so as to raise the quality, added value and competitiveness of farm products and foodstuff, especially the province’s spearhead products.

5. Infrastructure development

a/ Transport:

To synchronously develop the transport system in the locality to ensure the uninterruptedness and connectivity among areas in the province and the region. To develop transport in urban zones, centralized goods production areas, resettlement areas and border areas in association with national defense and security protection.

- Roads: To upgrade and renovate roads under planning such as national highways 2 and 279 and national highway 34’s section from Ha Giang city to Khau Don, national highway 4C and national highway 4’s section from Ha Giang to Lao Cai connected with the Ha Noi-Lao Cai expressway; to upgrade a number of roads to national highways, zone off urban roads, bus station infrastructure facilities, parking lots, border corridor roads, and border patrol roads. To build national highway bypasses crossing townships.

- Waterways: To build an inland waterway wharf in Bac Me district to serve tourism and cargo transport on Na Hang hydro-power reservoir along Bac Me-Na Hang route.

- Airway: To study and plan the development of a domestic airport up to 3C standards to first of all serve taxi transport in Tan Quang.

b/ Power supply:

- To continue building the hydropower system under planning so that by 2020 the total capacity of hydropower plants will reach nearly 800 MW, turning out 2.4-2.5 billion kWh/year. They include the hydropower system on Nho Que river, the hydropower steps on Lo and Chay rivers, and the hydropower system on Mien river.

- To synchronously develop the 110 kVA and 220 kVA power networks and transmission and distribution transformer stations to achieve the local socio-economic development targets; to build the 35 kV, 22 kV, 10 kV, 0.4 kV distribution system and transformer stations in residential areas.

c/ Irrigation:

- To focus investment sources on upgrading and building reservoirs and important irrigation works, and solidifying the canal and ditch system. To prioritize investment in the irrigation system in the planned key wet rice zones. To complete the repair and upgrade of the existing irrigation works and solidify the canal and ditch system.

- To study and build irrigation works in areas with water source potential and relatively centralized land areas, mainly small reservoirs and dams covering 10 ha to 150 ha, prioritizing investment in South Yen Minh irrigation works, Xin Man district irrigation works, Dong Yen-Vinh Phuc, Bang Hanh 1 and 2 irrigation works, Vi Xuyen and Bac Me district irrigation works, and three-commune cluster in Hoang Su Phi.

d/ Water supply:

- To continue developing clean water supply sources up to standards; to build a water supply system with a capacity of 8,000-10,000 m³per day in Ha Giang city; to build new water supply systems or raise the capacity of and complete the existing water supply systems in the districts. By 2020, every township will have a water plant with a capacity of at least 1,000 m³per day.

- To finish the construction of centralized reservoirs serving the daily life of residents in the mountainous districts of Dong Van, Quan Ba, Meo Vac and Yen Minh.

dd/ Information and communications:

- To strongly develop information and communications activities meeting socio-economic development requirements; to formulate terrestrial television transmission and broadcasting digitalization programs and projects under schedule; to modernize and diversify service types, expand the transmission and broadcasting network associated with the application of modern technologies in the radio-television, television, telecommunications and communication.

- By 2020, to complete the construction of grassroots radio stations in the locality; to have 250 post offices. All communes with have mobile phone coverage; 35% of households will have computers and more than 70% of the population will have access to the Internet with the rate of 8 internet users per 100 people. To build and complete a number of common databases of the province such as the database on socio-economic development targets; administrative procedures for the management of public employees and civil servants; land, natural resources and environment.

e/ Environmental protection, wastewater drainage and waste treatment:

- Environmental management and protection will be strengthened at provincial,  district and commune levels to protect the environment more effectively, especially environmental quality monitoring; to continue properly implementing programs and projects to regreen bare land and denuded hills, increase forest coverage and improve the quality of biodiversity forests.

- To guarantee funds for environmental protection work with immediate focus on the disposal of waste in urban centers, hospital waste and waste in industrial parks, and the urban wastewater collection and treatment system; to study and create mechanisms and policies to involve the private sector in the disposal of urban solid waste.

- To build wastewater drainage systems and treatment stations in Ha Giang city, district centers, urban centers and industrial parks to separate the rainwater drainage system from the wastewater drainage system; to continue zoning off and building centralized waste land dumps up to standards with suitable sizes and at suitable locations in Ha Giang city and district centers; to zone off cemeteries far from residential areas and water sources.

6. National defense and security

- To further strengthen national defense and security and social order and safety, ensure national sovereignty and political stability for socio-economic development. To build the all-people national defense associated with the people’s security posture. To ensure political security and social order and safety; to prevent and combat crimes undermining national security, repel social evils and curb traffic accidents.

- To regularly organize combat training and military exercises in defense zones to prepare all conditions for proactive response in any circumstances to firmly safeguard the country’s border areas.

- To build the Vietnam-China border of peace and friendship, expand bilateral foreign relations and economic, science-technology and education-training cooperation.

IV. ORIENTATIONS FOR SPATIAL AND TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT

1. Development of economic sub-regions

a/ Low sub-region:

- The sub-region embraces Ha Giang city and Bac Me, Bac Quang, Quang Binh and Vi Xuyen districts. This sub-region will drive provincial development.

- Orientation for development: trade, service, industrial development and border-gate economy (Thanh Thuy international border-gate economic zone). To set up centralized food crop, tea, soybean and citrus fruit tree cultivation zones in order to harvest a large commodity volume; to develop poultry and cattle farming and aquaculture; to develop agriculture, forestry and fisheries processing, electronic, refrigeration and handicraft and fine art industries; to develop hydropower, mining, mineral processing, paper material and paper production, tea and fruit processing, and construction materials industries and trade, services and tourism. This sub-region should have mechanisms and policies to encourage public-private cooperation models in services like tourism, healthcare and education.

b/ Western mountainous sub-region:

- The sub-region covers Hoang Su Phi and Xin Man districts and a number of communes of Vi Xuyen, Quang Binh and Bac Quang districts.

- To develop material forests and industrial plants such as tea and soybean associated with processing industry for commodity production; raising of pigs, buffaloes and goats; hydropower and mining and mineral processing industries under planning. To upgrade the Xin Man-Do Long border gate to a national border gate to boost the two countries’ border trade.

c/ Northern mountainous sub-region:

- The sub-region consists of Dong Van, Quan Ba, Meo Vac and Yen Minh districts.

- To develop raising of cows, goats and pigs; to develop maize and medicinal plants; to exploit the Dong Van Karst Plateau Geopark to attract local and foreign tourists; to develop construction material production, hydropower, mining and mineral processing under planning.

2. Urban development, rural population

The rate of urbanization will increase to 17-20% by 2020, 25% by 2025 and 28-30% by 2030.

- Central urban center: to focus on infrastructure to meet grade-III urban center criteria in Ha Giang city.

- Urban center with combined functions: Thanh Thuy township in Vi Xuyen district, an international border-gate economic urban zone.

- Central urban centers: Viet Quang town in Bac Quang district, Vinh Quang town in Hoang Su Phi district, and Yen Minh town in Yen Minh district.

- Border urban centers: Coc Pai township in Xin Man district, Pho Ban and Dong Van townships in Dong Van district, Meo Vac township in Meo Vac district, Yen Minh township in Yen Minh district, and Tam Son township in Quan Ba district.

- Other urban centers: Vinh Tuy, Hung An and Tan Quang townships in Bac Quang district, Yen Binh township in Quang Binh district, Viet Lam and Vi Xuyen townships in Vi Xuyen district, Yen Phu township in Bac Me district, Xin Cai township in Meo Vac district, and Bach Dich township in Yen Minh district.

- Border communes will be zoned off in close connection with the urban system and rural residential areas along the Vietnam-China border.

V. LIST OF PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS PRIORITIZED FOR INVESTMENT STUDY (see the enclosed Appendix).

VI. MAJOR Solutions FOR the master plan IMPLEMENTATION

1.Investment capital

-The total demand for investment capital to implement the master plan in the 2016-2020 period is estimated at VND 43 trillion.

- To mobilize capital from the state budget, government bonds, credit capital, enterprises and other sources in which state budget capital will be spent mainly on building socio-economic infrastructure. To effectively use all economic sectors’ resources; to continue studying incentive mechanisms and policies to attract investment resources; to raise capital from land funds, foreign loans and private investment.

2. Human resources

- To combine training and development of local human resources and attraction of high-quality workforce from other localities to meet development requirements, especially for high-knowledge industries such as biotechnology, new material, environmental technology, information and communication, and energy.

- To develop training support policies, including vocational training for workers; training and retraining in professional, management, foreign language, information technology knowledge and skills, and postgraduate training for local officials; training and retraining in economic management and business administration for enterprise managers; and to support and encourage the shifting of labor from agriculture to other occupations.

- To encourage all economic sectors to organize vocational training courses and create jobs for workers; to implement solutions to help the unemployed and underemployed find jobs. To rationally deal with the relations between economic growth and human resource development and employment for workers.

3. Science and technology

- To encourage local enterprises to focus investment on renewing production technologies, replacing outdated equipment and synchronizing technologies in the  advantageous sectors of the province such as mining and mineral processing, agricultural, forest and fisheries product processing; and food processing. To promote consultation cooperation with scientific centers, research institutes and universities in technology renovation, in-depth investment and technology transfer with the aim of raising productivity and quality and cutting product prices or turning out new products, meeting social consumption demands.

- To employ and satisfactorily treat scientists and technologists, step by step improve the capacity of the province’s scientists and technical experts. To encourage science organizations and scientists to take part in and contribute to the province’s science, technology and environment fields. To adopt incentive policies to support enterprises and production establishments in the transfer of new advanced technologies.

- To encourage environmental protection activities, strictly handle acts of environmental destruction or pollution, especially in urban areas, industrial parks and clusters, craft villages, centralized residential areas, entertainment and tourist sites, hospitals and bus stations.

4. Mechanisms and policies

a/ Development assistance

- To create an attractive investment environment with incentive mechanisms and policies to encourage land lease and use to implement projects, and compensate for site clearance; to adopt specific mechanisms for coordination in land use planning and ensure the harmony between national defense and security and economic development.

- To continue implementing a number of solutions to support production, especially sectors capable of boosting socio-economic development such as electronic industry, information and communication technology, and hi-tech industry; to effectively implement mechanisms to encourage the development of rural industry.

- To encourage and facilitate the development of non-state economic sectors, especially the private economic sector. To reaffirm the private economic sector as an important integral part of the economy, ensure equality between the private economic sector and other economic sectors, direct the private economic sector to invest in developing advantageous fields with market demands, especially fields that the sector has many conditions to develop. The State will create conditions for private enterprises and production and business households to access and borrow loans from credit institutions and development assistance funds.

b/ Support for various forms of production organization

- To consolidate and develop the collective economy with cooperatives being the core, especially in specialized cultivation and animal raising areas, and develop traditional craft villages; to encourage the development of household economy through training support, provision of consultation services and access to loan programs.

- To promote the state management role through the development of public-utility enterprises to timely and fully provide social services.

c/ Consolidation and development of product outlets:

To pay attention to expanding domestic and foreign markets. To reduce prices, improve quality, and renovate designs and patterns of products so as to increase their competitiveness and sustainably develop the market; to pay more attention to building and advertising trademarks for products with development potential. To raise farmers’ commodity sale capacity. To encourage and support enterprises and economic sectors in seeking and developing outlets.

d/ Speeding up administrative reform and building up the state apparatus at all levels: To increase the instruction, inspection and urging of administrative reform. To effectively implement the assignment and decentralization policy. To combine administrative reform and implementation of grassroots democracy regulations and synchronous administrative reform in all sectors and at all levels and in all aspects with immediate focus on administrative institution reform and personnel building, allocating sufficient finance and human resources for administrative reform; to build a transparent, strong and efficient administration system meeting socio-economic development requirements from provincial to grassroots levels.

5. Sustainable environmental protection and development

- To closely combine environmental protection and the implementation of projects. Sectors that need to attach importance to environmental protection assessment in the coming time include building and expanding urban centers, developing mining and animal feed processing and tourism, especially eco-tourism in areas that are home to ecosystems sensitive to environmental impacts.

- Specific technical solutions to tackle environmental problems during the implementation of the projects’ contents include reducing air pollution caused by gas emissions and noise; upgrading the urban transport system; controlling vehicles to reduce gas emissions and noise from transportation activities; reducing water pollution caused by wastewater; reducing land pollution caused by chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in agricultural production; and reducing environmental pollution due to solid waste.

6. Cooperation and connection in regional development and international integration

- To take the initiative in international economic integration, improving competitiveness, promoting high and stable economic growth rate based on rational economic restructuring, improving the investment and business and production environment, effectively exploiting domestic and foreign resources, and raising the efficiency of using investment capital.

- To work out general orientations for international economic integration associated with the master plan on socio-economic development of the province through 2020, with a vision toward 2030; to raise the awareness of Party committees at all levels, officials, enterprises and people in the locality about international economic integration and future development objectives and tasks. To widely disseminate knowledge of international economic integration relating to economic, trade and investment agreements that Vietnam has signed and difficulties faced by enterprises during international economic integration.

To promote international cooperation, increase trade and investment cooperation with foreign countries or localities of countries with higher development level, market potential and advanced science and technology level.

-To develop cooperation programs with provinces in the northern mountainous and midland region and northern key economic region, as well as other provinces and major cities across the country to mobilize resources to tap the province’s comparative advantages.

VII. ORGANIZATION OF THE MASTER PLAN IMPLEMENTATION

1. After this master plan is approved, the province will publicize and disseminate it to Party committees and local administrations at all levels, sectors, mass organizations, enterprises and people in the province. Based on the contents of this master plan, the province shall formulate a specific action program for effective implementation of the master plan.

2. To concretize this master plan’s objectives into 5-year and annual plans for implementation and assessment of its results. All levels, sectors, socio-political organizations and people in the province shall examine and supervise the implementation and adjustment of the master plan.

3. To step up investment promotion activities, introduce the local potential and advantages to investors; to introduce programs and projects prioritized for investment, with focus on key projects manufacturing major products.

Article 2.The master plan serves as the foundation for formulating, appraising, approving and implementing sectoral master plans (construction master plan, land use master plan and plans and other related master plans), and investment projects in the province.

Article 3.To assign the People’s Committee of Ha Giang province, based on the approved master plan, to guide under regulations the formulation, approval and implementation of:

1. Socio-economic development master plans of districts and cities; construction master plan; land use master plan and plans; the master plan on development of sectors in the province to ensure conformity with the province’s socio-economic development tasks and association with national defense and security.

2. Long-, medium- and short-term plans, and specific projects for appropriate allocation of investment capital.

3. Studying, formulating and promulgating or submitting to competent authorities for promulgation mechanisms and policies suitable to the province’s development requirements in each period in order to attract and mobilize resources to implement the master plan.

Article 4.Related ministries and sectors within their functions, tasks and powers shall:

1. Guide and assist the People’s Committee of Ha Giang province in the course of the master plan implementation.

2. Coordinate with Ha Giang province in the course of reviewing, adjusting and supplementing sectoral development master plans and fields to ensure synchronicity and consistency of the master plan; consider and assist the province in mobilizing domestic and foreign investment capital sources to implement the master plan. Speed up investment and implementation of regional works and projects that play an important role in the development of Ha Giang province, which have already received investment decisions.

Article 5.This Decision takes effect on the date of its signing.

Article 6.The chairperson of the People’s Committee of Ha Giang province, ministers, heads of ministerial-level agencies and heads of government-attached agencies shall implement this Decision.-

Prime Minister
NGUYEN TAN DUNG

*All appendices to this Decision are not translated.