Agricultural land use rights should be considered as property rights

The area of rice land is still at 4.12 million hectares

Mr. Tran Tuan Anh stated that Resolution 19-NQ/TW on continuing to innovate land policy in the period of comprehensive promotion of the renovation work, creating a foundation for our country to basically become a modern industrial country by 2020 and Resolution 26-NQ/TW on agriculture, farmers and rural areas are very important resolutions, playing a fundamental role in the country’s land development and economy.

The working session focused on clarifying major issues, especially difficulties and obstacles in the implementation process, summarizing the two mentioned Resolutions of the Central Government, clearly seeing the advantages and disadvantages of the policy, issues related to management and governance, effective use of land for the nation’s sustainable development.

In regard to the implementation result, in terms of land use planning, the MARD has coordinated with the MONRE to adjust the agricultural land use planning to 2020 to be 27,038 million hectares, of which 3.76 million ha rice land needs to be kept and preserved, in reality, the area of rice land is still at 4.12 million ha.

The MARD has also issued a set of criteria to review the area of land, watershed protection forests, and low-key areas into production forest development planning. By 2020, there will be more than 16,244 million hectares of forestry land, which includes more than 4.6 million hectares of protection forest land, more than 2,358 million hectares of special-use forest land, and more than 9.2 million hectares of production forest land. The nation still has more than 14.677 million hectares of forest...

"Policies on agricultural land are still limited"

The report of the MARD Party Personnel Committee has drawn out several shortcomings, limitations and reasons to prove the necessity to further improve the promotion of sustainable development of the land use rights market:

Policies on agricultural land are still limited because there is no mechanism to promote market activities of agricultural land use rights under the market mechanism. There is no legal mechanism for enterprises to lease long-term agricultural land or use the right to lease land as collateral for bank loans.

Paddy fields are divided among households, so it is scattered and fragmented, which hinders the application of mechanization, science and technology to improve efficiency and added value per land area unit in the process of agricultural restructuring.

The management and use of land of agro - forestry companies, which are rearranged and renewed according to Resolution 30-NQ/TW of the 11th Politburo, still have low efficiency and are very complicated.

The delimitation of functions, tasks and powers of ministries, branches and localities in the state management on land still contains many contents that are not specified, synchronous and unified between the Land Law and other specialized laws such as the Forestry Law, Cultivation Law, Housing Law...

Form a market for trading agricultural land use rights

To solve the shortcomings above, the MARD has recommended and proposed to continue strengthening the leadership of the Party and the activities of mass organizations in the implementation of land policies and laws:

Promote information and communication, disseminate policies and laws on land for people to respond and follow, especially the policy of promoting land accumulation and concentration to develop concentrated, large-scale agricultural production.

Continue to survey and propose amendments and supplements to the 2013 Land Law in order to continue renewing policies and laws on land in Vietnam during the renewal promotion’s comprehensive period.

Consider agricultural land use rights as property rights for people to easily transfer, lease, contribute capital, and mortgage in a unified trading market like all other commodities, except for cases related to national sovereignty and security as expressly mentioned in the law.

Promote the role of the State in supporting and motivating other economic sectors to invest in agricultural lands that have not yet brought economic efficiency such as bare land, barren hills,…