The New Year Tree Planting Festival is launched in Yen Bai province. (Photo: VNA) Yen Bai (VNA) – Party General Secretary and President Nguyen PhuTrong launched the New Year Tree Planting Festival in Viet Cuong commune, TranYen district, the northern mountainous province of Yen Bai on February 10 (thesixth day of Lunar New Year 2019).
On November 28, 1959, President HoChi Minh wrote an article which was published on Nhan dan (People) newspaper,stressing the significance of tree planting to each person, each family and theentire nation. It has since become an annual Vietnamese custom each Lunar NewYear.
Addressing at the ceremony, the Party and State leader underlined that treeplantation has played an important role in preventing natural disasters,improving quality of the environment, and bettering local livelihoods amidst globalwarming, climate change and sea level rise, which are billed as one of theformidable challenges to the human beings in the 21st century.
He called upon the entire Party, army and people to engage in growing trees andforests as well as taking actions against deforestation as part of efforts toprotect the environment.
According to Minister of Agriculture andRural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong, the country planted more than 231,000hectares of concentrated forest and over 63 million scattered trees in 2018, raisingthe forest coverage to 41.65 percent. Meanwhile, the export of forestryproducts was estimated at more than 9.3 billion USD.
The forestry sector’s achievements contributed greatly to the nationalsocio-economic development in the year, he added.
In accordance with the Target Programme on Sustainable Forestry Development for2016-2020, competent agencies and sectors will work to raise forestry productionvalue by 6 percent annually, as well as forestry export to 10.5 billion USD andforest coverage to 41.85 percent in 2019.
In Yen Bai province, noticeable changes were seen in forestry production, withadditional 15,443 hectares of forest and the forest coverage reaching 63percent.
Following the launching ceremony, Party General Secretary and President NguyenPhu Trong met, delivered Tet greetings and presented gifts to local ethnicpeople.-VNA
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