President Truong Tan Sang has urged the northwest mountainous province of Hoa Binh to take full advantage of its strength to attract more investment inflows, thus touching a higher economic growth in the coming time.

During his working session with key leaders of the locality on Januarys 18, the President asked for stronger efforts to promote local economic growth, requiring focus on fostering administrative reform and infrastructure development.

He said the locality has retained stable growth speed in recent years, while its models of building new rural area prove effective, contributing to improving local people’s living conditions.

However, he noted that Hoa Binh needs to thoroughly solve a number of shortcomings, especially those related to drug trafficking.

Earlier, the State leader visited Tien Phong commune in Da Bac district, home to 560 households which gave up their land to building the Hoa Binh Hydropower Plant.

Due to disadvantages in transport and terrain split by mountains, the poverty rate of the commune remains high, accounting for 41 percent of the total. However, education and healthcare services there are still ensured.

Expressing concerns over the high rate, the President asked provincial authorities to intensify measures to narrow the rich-poor gap and gain sustainable poverty reduction.

He suggested learning from experience in fishery planning to improve local lives.

In 2014, the locality raked in over 10 trillion VND from agricultural and aquaculture production, reaching a growth rate of 4 percent. It welcomed 2 million holiday-makers in the year, earning 700 billion VND.

Hoa Binh will focus on eight groups of measures towards realising its socio-economic target in 2015, with emphasises will be placed on restructuring of agriculture and forming concentrated areas for goods production.-VNA