The First Vietnam National Rice Festival - Opportunity to attract investment in Hau Giang.

Member of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Hau Giang province’s party committee secretary, Nguyen Phong Quang:  The First Vietnam National Rice Festival - Opportunity to attract investment in Hau Giang.

As the first festival of international stature of Vietnam, The first Vietnam National Rice Festival is going to be taken place in the area of a newly formed province, one of the poorest provinces in the country but Hau Giang is the inspiration for the event. Hau Giang Newspaper’s reporter talked to Member of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Hau Giang province’s party committee secretary, Nguyen Phong Quang – the initiator of The Vietnam Rice Festival and the person who makes it come true.

* Can you tell me where the idea of organizing The Vietnam Rice Festival is from?

- As we know we have organized a number of festivals for recent years such as Coffee Festival, Tea Festival, Flower Festival … to honor the trademark of local specialties. and I think rice is a main product in the Mekong Delta and indispensable in Vietnamese people’s life. In addition, today’s rice does not only meet the domestic demand but also sells in the international market. Vietnam is now the second rice exporter country in the world. However, Vietnamese farmers still complain “bumper harvest, low rice price” repeatedly. Their life is still difficult because the price for export rice is low and the rice market fluctuates. Moreover, the introduction of Vietnamese competitive potential in rice cultivation and the building and publicizing Vietnamese rice trade name in the international market have not matched the reality. To develop Vietnamese rice deserving its importance domestically and internationally, we need to have comprehensive measures from central government to local authorities. Above all we need to organize a lots of events to make it easy for producers, customers, exporters, importers to meet and to exchange ideas so as to join forces in investment and cooperation. This rice festival will bring together ideas, initiatives, and dreams to make Vietnamese rice prosper as well as to raise the prestige of Vietnamese rice name in the international market. The ideas above have inspired me to initiate and organize The Vietnam Rice Festival. With the unanimity and support from the province’s party committee I have submitted the proposal to the central ministries and branches, provincial authorities of the Mekong Delta, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and received their warm supports. In the end, the Prime Minister approved to assign Hau Giang to host The first Vietnam Rice Festival taken place at the end of this November.

*There are a lot of difficulties. Not only the province’s infrastructure is poor but also its facilities as well as its rice production reality and potentials are far from good in comparison to those of other provinces and cities of the Mekong Delta such as An Giang, Dong Thap, Can Tho City. So what does Hau Giang aim at by hosting The Vietnam Rice Festival?

- Hau Giang has favorable geographical position in the sub-region of Hau River’s West and it has Xa No Canal, one of the first places to export Vietnamese rice. This is the advantage for Hau Giang to host The first Vietnam Rice Festival. As I mentioned above, apart from honoring our wet rice civilization and the ability to export rice in the international market this festival is organized as one in the chain events to mark 1,000 years of Thang Long – Hanoi. Furthermore, the hosting of The first Vietnam Rice is the driving force to speed up the investment in building social and economic infrastructure in a newly-established province inherently poverty like Hau Giang. Vi Thanh, the central site for the festival, will have chances to accelerate its urbanization process as well as to meet some standards of urbanism type 3 which is going to be evaluated at the end of the year. This is also a chance for Hau Giang to call for domestic and foreign investment in all fields, especially in key areas such as infrastructure of transportation, of industrial zones, of industrial concentration, of trade and service. The festival is also a concrete event in the Government’s action plan to implement the 07th session resolution of the X Central Party Committee about the issue of “three farms” (agriculture, farmers, rural areas).

* Can you elaborate the concretization of the Government’s action plan to implement the 07th session resolution of the X Central Party Committee about the issue of “three farms” (agriculture, farmers, rural areas) at The first Vietnam Rice Festival?

- We will carry out the action plan in agricultural production based on the festival’s activities to honor the achievements of the wet rice civilization, rice production’s strength and potentials, scientific and technological applications, rice trade and export expansion, the building of Vietnamese rice brand name. We hope to work out new ways to develop Vietnam’s rice products in particular and Hau Giang’s agriculture in general through seminars, competitions, scientific and technological achievements and precious experiences in rice producing and trading from domestic and foreign businesses at the festival. We will re-plan the production and give farmers guidance in choosing seed rice to increase the productivity and quality of rice production to meet the demand of domestic consumption and export. Only in that way can farmers raise the rice production, quality, and their income. Farmers in Hau Giang and elsewhere in Vietnam will not repeat the complaint of “bumper harvest, low rice price”. The farmers’ standard of living will be raised gradually contributing to the campaign of building new, rich, civilized rural areas, protecting ecological environment, keeping the national identities.

* How does Hau Giang make its development strategy relating to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers after the festival ends?

- Experiences, scientific and technological advances, market information from producing rice, doing business, and building Vietnamese rice trade name in the international market which are gained through the festival’s seminars and competitions will be invaluable to work out new ways for developing agriculture in general and wet rice profession in particular. So Hau Giang will make plans to develop its agriculture as well as other economic sectors more comprehensively. It is the immediate task to focus on human resources strategy, especially on specialists who have deep professional knowledge such as cadres of agriculture promotion, aquaculture, plant protection. Besides concentrating on developing human resources serving agriculture, we should intensify training and attracting talented people to serve industrial and service sectors with high technology. In that way Hau Giang can make use of the agricultural strength of a sub-region in Hau River’s West.

* Thank you very much!

by Kim Loan
(Source: Hau Giang Newspaper)