Hau Giang calls for 5,000 billion VND investment in the agricultural sector

Within the framework of the Workshop on Investment Promotion in Hau Giang province in 2022 with the theme of "Businesses prosper in Hau Giang", Hau Giang province held a conference on July 15 on potentials and opportunities for investment and development in the field of agriculture. Agriculture is one of the key fields identified as the mainstay in the development of the province.

Namely, the provincial annual rice cultivation area is 189 thousand hectares, the average yield is 6.76 tons per hectare, the annual output is over 1.2 million tons. The area of ​​fruit trees also reaches over 43 thousand hectares with an output of 400 thousand tons. Livestock production has developed stably, with a total of 143 thousand pigs and 4.5 million poultry. The total annual fishery production reaches 80 thousand tons.

Dr. Tran Minh Hai, Vice Principal of the College of Management for Agriculture and Rural Development II was excited to hear that Hau Giang province's agricultural sector has formed many synchronous value chains from production, processing, and product consumption. The value chains also include the participation from businesses, cooperatives, cooperative groups, farmers growing rice, fruit trees and aquaculture. Subsequently, the province has helped cooperative members and farmers to improve their sense of production according to market demand as well as improve income and profitability in production.

In addition, the excellent implementation of the value chain has helped cooperatives in the province to increase their competitiveness and gradually build their own agricultural product brands, namely: Vi Thuy clean rice brand, Ky Nhu grilled bronze featherback fish cakes, Hau Giang seedless lemon, etc. A a result, the brands have helped local agricultural, forestry and fishery products increase their capacity to actively connect with customers. Additionally, the value chains created a large product scale, with uniform quality and regular supply capacity to serve the requirements of businesses as well as the market.

Dr. Hai emphasized that Hau Giang is also the first Southern Vietnam province to independently build a strategy for sustainable agricultural development, adapting to climate change in Hau Giang province, for the period of 2021 - 2025, with orientation towards 2030. The strategy focuses on building 15 cooperative models, 3 cooperative unions synchronously invested in infrastructure, machinery, equipment; comprehensively developed and effectively operated. The strategy specifically aims to build 3 centers for collecting, sorting, preliminarily processing, packaging and distributing agricultural products.

With the strategies, plans and ideas established, it is necessary for the province to promote calling for investment. Hau Giang province has actively promoted the call for investment in clean agriculture, high-tech agriculture, organic agriculture, processing and deep processing of agricultural products, etc. In comparision with other provinces and cities, Hau Giang province's work of attracting investment in agriculture is considered to be underwhelming and lacking.

Hau Giang provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development reported that the province currently has only 5 businesses operating in the field of vegetables, tubers and fruits processing with a total monthly capacity of nearly 1,900 tons of products. This figure is assessed to be too low and disporpotionate to the province's potentials.

Moreover, Dr. Tran Minh Hai assessed that the connection of agricultural products value chains in the province is not sustainable because the province's agricultural sector still mainly focuses on developing quantity at high production costs while the quality and value are still low, not enough to comprehensively participate in the agricultural products value chain in the market.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Toan, Director of the Department of Agricultural Product Processing and Market

Hau Giang with its geographical location adjacent to Can Tho city is a great opportunity for the province to call for investment; to be proactive in linking regions, linking large urban areas and potential markets for strong agricultural product consumption; to extend the reach of the province's agricultural products.

Development (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), pointed out the orientation for Hau Giang agricultural products to develop and attract investors: the province should pay attention to 2 driving forces. These forces include building a medium-level processing and preservation facility for cooperatives, within the scope of support and utilize national science and technology programs, as well as directly support projects on preliminary processing and preservation.

“In the future, the province needs to maintain the quality of OCOP products, so that they can be truly acknowledged. With the province's 5 main products including rice, seedless lemon, jackfruit, bronze featherback, and field eel, it is necessary to encourage businesses to develop these products, with mechanisms and policies for each project", said Mr. Toan.

Brand and national brand building, development, implementation of planting area codes as well as traceability also play an important role. They create a solid premise for the province's agricultural products to be competitive in the international integration development trend.

On the occasion of the 2022 investment promotion Workshop in Hau Giang, the province presented a list of 21 key projects and 1 potential project to call for investment in the agricultural sector; the total investment capital is over 5,000 billion VND. The most notably of which is the project of producing high-quality rice, smart rice, and organic rice, with a scale of over 120 hectares in a high-tech agricultural park, and a total investment capital of over 964 billion VND. On the other hand, there are also various aquacultural projects on a scale of 74.2 hectares and total investment capital of 593 ha.