Quang Tri largest million-dollar shrimp breeding project terminated

The Uni-President Vietnam Aquatic Breeding Co., Ltd - Quang Tri Branch has just sent a document to report on the current situation and propose to close for transfer of existing assets of this enterprise's shrimp breeding production project in Trung Giang commune, Gio Linh district due to many difficulties in operation.

The Company’s project on producing shrimp breeds was approved for investment by the People's Committee of Quang Tri province on July 28, 2011, and adjusted its investment policy on October 17, 2016. It aimed to produce shrimp breeds and provide services in producing and consuming shrimp breed and shrimp meat with a scale of nearly 6ha and expected productivity of 2 billion shrimp seed per year.

In fact, the People's Committee of Quang Tri allocated land for the project according to Decision No. 1601/QD-UBND dated August 4, 2011, and has completed to handover procedures. Construction permits numbered 493/GPXD dated October 25, 2012, and 224/GPXD dated November 18, 2014, were approved for the project along with approval on the environmental impact assessment report dated September 1, 2011. After being granted an investment policy in 2011, the investor had implemented with a total capital of USD10 million, and then the project was put into operation following the approved schedule.

According to Mr. Nguyen Huu Vinh, Deputy Director of Quang Tri Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the annual demand for shrimp breeds in Quang Tri province is about 80-100 million black tiger shrimp and  1-1.5 billion white leg shrimp. However, at present, no unit in the province is producing such two species of shrimp so 100% of the shrimp breed must be imported from other localities.

However, the project has not carried out any significant production activities.

The Department of Planning and Investment of Quang Tri province said in 2017, Uni-President Aquatic Breeding Vietnam Co. Ltd submitted an application to suspend project investment from January 25, 2017, to January 25, 2018, for reasons that it faced difficulty in shrimp breed production.

Actually, according to a report on this company, even though the suspension period has expired, the project has not yet resumed operation. Thus, it has actually been suspended for 5 years from the time the investor submitted the application for suspension.

To deal with the situation, the Department of Planning and Investment has recently presided over and coordinated with the Department of Natural Resources and Environment and the People's Committee of Gio Linh District to inspect the implementation of this project.

The results showed that, at the time of inspection, the project was inactive. The operating system and infrastructure were degraded with many equipments badly damaged, causing a waste of resources and inefficiency of land use.

The investor was found to have made periodical reports on time as prescribed, however, it did not properly report on the actual situation of the project with its difficulties as well as recommendations and solutions to solve them. Thus, the project had been suspended for more than 12 months, violating regulations of the law on investment.

Members of the inspection group agreed to make a record of administrative violations on the project in the field of investment in Vietnam in accordance with regulations. Accordingly, administrative penalties will be imposed for the act of "Dishonestly and inaccurately reporting on investment activities" and the act of "shutting down the operation of the shrimp breed investment project with a total time overdue 12 months".

Along with the administrative sanction, the Quang Tri Department of Planning and Investment also guided the company to carry out procedures for terminating and handling project assets in accordance with the law.