Potential of Central Highlands
Ha Noi, Oct. 1 (VNA) -- Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) covers the southern part of the Truong Son Mountain Range and includes the four provinces of Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Dac Lac, and Lam Dong. Although its population is only 4.2 million, including about 2.2 million in rural areas, the Central Highlands has always been considered strategically important.
The region, which is home to many ethnic minority groups, is renowned for its huge natural resources and potential in agriculture, forestry, and tourism. It is also known for its cool climate, beautiful mountain scenery and innumerable streams, lakes and waterfalls.
The Central Highlands has about 5.6 million ha of natural land, accounting for 16.8 percent of Viet Nam's total area, of which 3.2 million ha are forest areas, accounting for a remarkable 34 percent of the country's forest coverage. In the years of renewal, the Central Highlands has registered an average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 8.5 percent. Three of its four provinces have had double-digit annual GDP growth, including Gia Lai at 12.6 percent; Lam Dong, 12 percent; and Dac Lac, 11 percent.
The number of well-off families in the region has also increased by 1-1.5 percent year-on-year. About one-third of its communes have access to electricity, while nearly 80 percent of its population are now provided with well water; all its communes now have primary schools; and half of its communes have junior high schools.
In addition, more local highlanders have been given cultural exchanges and information to help raise their general awareness and understanding as well as get rid of their bad habits and backward practices. Healthcare networks have also been expanded to every district and commune, thus contributing to the initial control of malaria, goitre, diarrhoea and other killer diseases.
Besides its self-sufficient food supply through the expansion of cultivated areas and irrigation systems as well as the rotation of rice crops, the Central Highlands has developed diverse cash and industrial crops such as coffee, rubber, cotton and mulberry for silkworm breeding.
Its coffee area has increased from 6,500 ha in 1976 to more than 200,000 ha at present, with an average yield of 1.9 tonnes per ha. Its rubber area has also been expanded to more than 45,000 ha, much of which is owned by private individuals, including ethnic minority people. By giving more land allotments to individuals for afforestation, its forest areas have now risen to about 700,000 ha from 500,000 ha a few years ago.
The Government has developed policies of price and transport fee subsidies with regard to some pivotal production materials and other essentials of the highlanders. Soft bank loans have also been offered for expanded production, including an interest rate cut by 15-30 percent for poor households. The Government has continuously maintained its free delivery of four essential products of iodised salt, medicines, kerosene, and also writing paper for school children of the Central Highlands.
The Government has to date invested billions of VND for sedentary life and settled farming as well as the building of new economic zones and rural infrastructural facilities such as electricity networks, roads, schools, irrigations, healthcare services and cultural houses and centres.
However, part of the ethic minority community living in remote and isolated regions are still facing many difficulties and challenges resulting from nomadic life and farming, improper use of cultivated land, low incomes, and wider gaps between rich and poor. Low development of regional infrastructure and low levels of education as well as production and an investment capital shortage are also included in these difficulties encountered by highlanders.
Drastic measures should be taken to remove these difficulties including the Government's policy to improve the living conditions of the ethnic minority people, above all those residing in remote and isolated areas, and further investment for the implementation of hunger elimination and poverty reduction programme in the Central Highlands.
In addition, effective ways and means should be also sought to properly tap the huge regional potential, including both human and natural resources, to boost socio-economic growth in the region on a sustainable and systematic basis and to combine economic development with social progress and environmental protection.
The Government should initiate a policy to ensure better land and forest allocations, with priority given to ethnic minority groups in order to help them expand their crop cultivation and settled farming.
It would also chart a course of regional development by combining the development of a commodity economy and gradual industrialisation and modernisation, and the provision of more soft bank loans to highlanders for production and business operations.
No less important are the Government's policies to beef up personnel training and human resource development for the Central Highlands, including policies geared towards old villagers and local officials in order to promote national unity among the ethnic minority groups in the region.--VNA
