General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong has asked the mountainous northern province of Lai Chau to maintain its growth rate and prioritise infrastructure development, especially transport.

The General Secretary was speaking at a working session between the Secretariat of the CPV’s Central Committee and the Standing Committee of Lai Chau provincial Party Committee in Hanoi on August 27.

Lai Chau has a key political and military position, and advantages in agro-forestry, mining and eco-tourism development, according to the Party chief.

As the province has a long borderline, which is favourable for economic development, it should promote its border economy and make full use of the Chinese market and develop cooperation between the two border areas, the Party leader said.

Being the country’s poorest province with difficult terrain, the province’s per capita income is just 36 percent of the national average. As a result, Lai Chau should strengthen investment and create favourable conditions for the province’s construction and development, he emphasised.

The Party leader also asked the province to focus on improving people’s intellectual standards, the quality of human resources, personnel training, and the development of young staff, especially female and ethnic minority workers.

The province should also pay attention to Party building, successfully perform mass mobilisation and continue to implement the Party Central Committee’s Resolution on Party building and the Politburo’s Directive on learning and following President Ho Chi Minh’s moral example.

According to a report heard at the working session, over the last two years, Lai Chau has maintained an average annual GDP growth rate of 13.8 percent. Food production has been increased which in turn helped ensure food security in the province.

The poverty rate falls by 7.5 percent per year while 65.3 percent of households have access to the national power grid and 69 percent of rural people have been provided with clean water.

The CPVCC Secretariat agreed upon the tasks and measures set forth by the province to help it escape from under development by 2015 and become a middle development province in the region by 2020.-VNA