Permanent Vice Chairman of the Dak Lak People’s Committee Nguyen Tuan Ha speaks at the meeting (Source: daklak.gov.vn)
Hanoi (VNA) – The eighth Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Festival is scheduled to take place from March 9 to 16 next year under the theme “Dak Lak - The destination of the world coffee”.
At a meeting on May 20 to discuss the organisation of the festival, Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Thai Hong Ha highlighted some activities of the festival such as opening ceremony, exhibitions, seminars, conferences, promotion and honouring events, travel itineraries, and closing ceremony.
Currently, Tinh Tu Exhibition and Communications Co., Ltd. and Pro, an event organiser, have applied for hosting the programme, he added.
Due to the complicated developments of the COVID-19, the provincial People’s Committee considered developing two organisation plans (with or without the participation of international visitors) and deciding the scale of the festival.
Permanent Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Nguyen Tuan Ha asked the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism to coordinate with relevant departments to update the disease situation to choose the most appropriate time for hosting the event.
An art performance at the opening ceremony of the seventh Buon Ma Thuot coffee festival in 2019 (Photo: Vietnam News Agency).
The seventh Buon Ma Thuot coffee festival took place on March 9-16 last year following the theme "The Quintessence of the Jungle".
The event helped promote the local coffee brand and strengthen solidarity among Central Highland ethnic groups.
A coffee trade fair drew 230 businesses with 800 pavilions, as well as around 200,000 visitors.
Meanwhile, a coffee development workshop attracted 400 participants suggesting the designing of new development policies for Vietnamese coffee.
More than 30 organisations and individuals at home and abroad engaged in a special coffee contest during the 2019 festival.
Within the framework of an investment promotion conference, 38 projects were granted decisions for investment plans, investment licences and memoranda of understanding worth over 71.6 trillion VND (3.1 billion USD).
Buon Ma Thuot is home to some of the finest coffee in Vietnam.
Trung Nguyen Coffee Village is a popular tourist attraction. It belongs to the Trung Nguyen Corporation and visitors can drink coffee in cafes with traditional Central Highlands architecture, take pictures of a miniature waterfall and see Central Highlands cultural artefacts.
Another attraction is the World Coffee Museum, which has numerous coffee-related artefacts from around the world: like vintage coffee containers and cups, equipment and merchandise and traditional harvest tools of the Central Highlands.
Over the years many eco-tourism sites have emerged like KoTam Eco tourism area, which offer visitors a chance to immerse themselves in the rich culture of the Central Highlands, see the greenery and waterfalls and lakes, wear traditional outfits, listen to traditional musical performances, and sample traditional foods and drinks like roasted jungle fowl, com lam (sticky rice grilled in bamboo shoots served with sesame) and ruou can (fermented rice wine in earthen jugs, drank through long bamboo tubes).
Coffee was first cultivated in Vietnam in 1857. To date, Vietnam’s coffee growing areas reached 20,000ha. Vietnam is currently the world’s second largest coffee exporter, after Brazil. The Central Highlands province of Dak Lak boasts the country’s largest coffee-growing area, with a total area of about 190,000ha, producing 450,000 tonnes of coffee beans annually.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in the first quarter of this year, Vietnam exported 474,000 tonnes of coffee, earning 801 million USD. Those figures declined by 3 percent in volume and 5.6 percent in value year on year due to the impact of COVID-19./.
