An Overview Of Binh Dinh Province

Geography

Binh Dinh Province which is situated on the coast of middle Central Viet Nam runs 110 km north-south with a natural land area of approx. 6,025km² plus 36,000km² of sea waters.

Binh Dinh borders Quang Ngai, Gia Lai and Phu Yen Provinces on the north, west and south respectively. Its extreme coordinates include 14°42'10'' N, 108º55'4"E at the top north point and 13º39'10"N, 108º55'4"E at the bottom south point.

It has a steep elevation and sloping land from west to east. All of the rivers flowing through the province are short and are often flooded during the wet season whilst dry during the hot season. There are four main rivers, namely, Kon, Ha Thanh, La Tinh, and Lai Giang Rivers.

Climate and weather

Binh Dinh is in the tropical region with high humidity and prevalent southerly and northerly winds during the dry and wet seasons respectively. The dry season is from January to August and the wet season is from September to December. Long droughts are often observed during the dry season and most of the annual rainfall of approx. 1,751 mm to 2,658 mm is concentrated in October and November. This often causes severe flooding in the province.

Administration

Binh Dinh is divided into Quy Nhon City, An Nhon Borough and nine other districts, including Tuy Phuoc, Van Canh, Phu Cat, Phu My, Hoai An, Hoai Nhon, An Lao, Tay Son and Vinh Thanh. Each district has a township where the district administration offices are based. Some districts such as Phu My, Hoai Nhon and Tay Son have a satellite township apart from the main district town.

Each district is divided into communes and then each commune into villages. However, Quy Nhon and An Nhon have a mixture of wards and communes depending on whether the administrative unit is in the urban or rural areas. There are 159 wards/communes/townships in the province.

The government structure includes People's Council and People's Committee. The People's Council consists of community representatives elected by local communities during provincial, district and commune levels elections; whereas, the People's Committee consists of professionals selected by the People's Council. The People's Committee is assisted by departments and sub-departments at provincial and district levels respectively. There are a wide variety of departments and sub-departments, including health; education and training; agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development; trade and industry; finance; planning and investment; culture, information and communication; and tourism; construction; environment and natural resources; police, etc.

Population

Binh Dinh has approx. 1.5 million people with around 25% in urban areas and 75% in rural areas. The average inhabitant density is 247 people per square meter.

The biggest ethnic group is the Kinh, comprising a majority of the population; and then around 40,000 people of ethnic minority people, including Cham, Ba Na and Hre. Ethnic minority people inhabit mostly in the mountainous areas.

Economy and development

Binh Dinh has an agriculture-based economy with approx. 70% of its population involving in agricultural activities, including rice, cereal, fruit and vegetable crop cultivation, livestock growing and pepper growing (esp. in some mid-land or mountainous areas where the soil is suitable for the crop). With most of its natural land area is either sloping or hilly, Binh Dinh is also suitable for industrial tree crops such as cashew, acacia and eucalyptus. These create opportunities for local and foreign investors in establishing their plantations and also processing industry of these industrial tree crops such as wood chip mills or wood product factories for export purposes.

There are many good quality quarries of granite and basalt stones in Binh Dinh and its neighboring Gia Lai Province and a good number of granite and/or basalt stone. Hence, there have been a good number of local stone work companies set up in the province. Click here and then here for some information of these companies.

Along the coastal line of Binh Dinh, esp. in Phu Cat and Phu My Districts, there are high-concentration ores of titanium. That is why there have been some local as well as joint venture companies operating in titanium mining. Aiming at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of titanium exploitation in Binh Dinh for better outcomes and profits, Binh Dinh Province People's Committee promulgated Directive 26/2003/CT-UB dated 04/09/2003 to encourage the processing of raw titanium than just exporting just raw material. This has opened a good opportunity for foreign investors if they are keen for local development and also to benefit from preferential treatment in this type of investment in processing raw titanium into final products.

With a good number of wood tree plantations in the province and an international seaportQuy Nhon Seaport situated in Quy Nhon, there have been some good development and establishment of wood processing and in-door and out-door furniture factories in Binh Dinh Province. This industry establishment concentrates more in Quy Nhon City or its vicinity such as Phu Tai or An Nhon as for better and shorter distance transportation.

Whilst most industrial establishments for export purposes concentrates in Quy Nhon or its vicinity, garment plants/factories are usually spread out to districts areas such as Tay Son, Phu Cat, Phu My, Hoai Nhon and Hoai An for accessing to and attracting cheap laborers in the rural areas.

Labor force

A large proportion of the population is in the good labor force ages, ranging from 20 to 50. Most of them are skilled laborers qualified in technical fields such as IT, mechanic, civil engineering, . Yet there are still unskilled laborers (approx. % of the local labor force) who have finished general education without any tertiary education or training. However, these people are good at muscle work and diligent employees.

Most graduates and post-graduates who are bright would choose to find employment opportunities in big cities like HCMC though the Province has made lots of attempts to attract them back home to

Most young people in the rural areas now

The local provincial authorities and other relevant departments are keen to provide assistance to potential and existing foreign investors to set up their businesses in Binh Dinh Province.

Binh Dinh Province's People's Committee (BD PPC), the government body of highest authority in the province, has assigned and authorized that:

• Binh Dinh Department of Planning and Investment (BD DPI) to assess applications for investment certificates and then propose to the People's Committee for granting investment certificates; whereas
• Binh Dinh Economic Zone Administration (BEZA) is granted with more autonomous authorities in assessing and granting investment certificates to local and foreign investors.In addition to investment certificates, investors still have to apply for other various types of certificates or approvals such as certificates of land use rights, evaluation and approval of environment impact assessment reports, registration of environment protection plans, approvals and certificates of fire protection and fighting plans, tax registration certificates, construction permits, etc depending on sector, scale and capital of their investment projects. These have to be done through various relevant local departments unless the intended investment project sites are located inside the local industrial or economic zones which are managed by BEZA, and BEZA has both the expertise and authority for the assessment, evaluation and granting such certificates, permits and approvals (except for tax registration and fire protection and fighting plans).

Investment in Binh Dinh

Local and international investors alike would benefit from investment preferential treatment policies from national and local government. All national policies are applied similarly in all provinces. In addition, the local People's Committee may introduce a number of preferential treatment policies to promote, encourage and attract more investment to the province.

There is a wide variety of types of investment for foreign investors. A foreign investor may create a company, buy an existing company or establish a branch of his/her existing company based in another province or city. Then investors may rent an office or lease a section of land for the construction of a factory. It is simple to rent an office; however, land leasing is fairly complicated depending on where the land plot is situated.

Land leasing in industrial zones, economic zones and industrial clusters is less complicated as the land has been recovered and cleared from individual leaseholders, and is ready and available for lease and construction of mills or factories. whereas, for land outside the above-mentioned zones and clusters which has not been recovered neither cleared, investors have to worked with local government agencies to recover and clear the land before any land lease process. The land recovery and clearance usually takes a long time and involves government agencies from provincial to grassroots levels.

To establish a processing mill or a factory, foreign investors can either enter joint venture agreement(s) with local investor(s) or lease a plot/plots of land from the government or sub-lease land from other land lessee as land property in Viet Nam is government owned and is only leased to individuals or organizations on a long-term or short-term basis.

It is required, by law, that all first-time foreign and local investors alike must establish their own corporation(s) prior to any further steps of investment. Corporation establishment can be together with office or factory establishment inside or outside industrial or economic zones of the province. The procedures and requirements for each of the categories are different and investors should follow the relevant procedures to speed up their investment outcomes.