The Ministry of Planning and Investment of Vietnam recently hosted a national workshop on draft circular relating to a new decree to encourage enterprises to invest in agriculture and rural development in a sustainable manner.

According to the Vietnam Business Forum Magazine (VBF), the newly-issued Decree 210/2014/ND-CP is expected to be a big push for value added of agricultural production and sustainable rural development.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Van Hieu said that business community played a vital role in sustainable rural development and agriculture growth as their production models and technology applications would help improve added value of agricultural production.

According to the Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, by the end of April this year, there were about 16,300 licensed foreign investment projects. Registered capital for the first 4 months of the year reached 4.8 billion USD, accounting for 52.2 percent of the figure earned in the same period last year. The country sucessfully called for 520 investment projects in agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector worth 3.3 billion USD during that period.

At the workshop, participants urged the Government to create new mechanisms to promote PPP in agriculture. This meant that the Government need to support investors and private enterprises in terms of tax and land rent scheme.

In addition, experts also tackled with issues relating to fragmentation of production, risks of natural disasters, epidemics, unstable market prices, poor performance in product quality control and food safety, unstable material areas, the breach of contract between farmers and businesses.

Participants also noted that local authorities should take into account their subjective and objective factors to adjust their economic structures to reach their sustainable development goals.-VNA