Vietnam Rubber Group handles issues raised by Vietnam Agriculture Newspaper

Series of difficulties

Over the past time, VAN informed a series of articles on the special subject of “Looking back 10 years of expanding rubber trees in the North Central region”. Regarding this content, the Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) has sent a document to the newspaper as well as delivered comments and directions for handling.

As mentioned by VRG, ruber trees have developed in Vietnam since 1897, and strongly grown in the Southeast areas and expanding to the Central Highlands area, Central Coast, and Northern Mountains. The reality shows that, although rubber businesses and farmers have met difficulties sometimes, rubber trees have created a source of life for the laborers.

Implementing the central policy on the program of supporting rapid and sustainable poverty reduction over 61 poor districts and the plan on developing ruber until 2015, visionary to 2020, the South Central Coast region continues to plant new 10 - 15 thousand ha on inefficient agricultural production land and convert natural forest land belonging to poor production forests suitable for rubber plantation, to stabilize the area of 40,000 hectares. The North Central region continues to plant about 20 thousand hectares, mainly using agricultural land, to stabilize the area of 80,000 hectares.

In addition, the Resolution on rubber development covers nine rubber companies, which has been regularly directed by the Group and prioritized in investment resources. The companies also received strong direction and support from the localities because in the initial stage of project implementation in the area there were almost no crops for high efficiency, the price of rubber latex at this time. quite good is considered a crop for poverty alleviation with many advantages in the region.

The initial result saw the development of 15.517,87 ha of rubber, of which the exploitation output in 2019 was 13.437,68 tons, in 2020 was 13.480 tons and projected to reach 15,770 tons in 2021.

Ruber trees have contributed to the environmental protection task via the greening of hilly areas that were formerly mainly bare hills, solving over 4,513 employees on the payroll. The average income according to the plan in 2021 is about VND 4.5 million per laborer per month, excluding the social insurance, health insurance ... that employees are entitled to.

National security task has been maintained in the project area. The investment in projects was quite synchronous with infrastructure systems such as electricity, roads, schools, stations, office buildings within the project area, which not only serves the project but also contributing to improving material life and living standards of the people in the region.

The project implementation has struggled with many difficulties such as the land fund is quite scattered leading to difficulties in management and exploitation; rubber plantation land is mainly hilly, fallow, and infertile land; hilly terrain, the soil is mechanically degraded (erosion, washout, landslide, landslide); farmers use chemical fertilizers, pesticides in production ... leading to chemical degradation (salt, acidic, alum, toxic to plants)...

Also due to the land quality in addition to the climate change, some rubber trees in some areas grew slowly, the cost of caring eas high while the investment cost increase.

With the aforementioned interwined difficulties and advantages, the Group and rubber companies still have certain achievements, demonstrating the responsibility and role of state enterprises in joining hands in economic development associatng with solving problems of social security, and national defense, building new rural areas, especially in difficult areas where rubber enterprises are located.

Four solutions

In fact, extreme weather, the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, especially the long-term decline in rubber prices are common difficulties of the whole industry, not only the North Central region and the North Central region. In this regard, the Group is having to carry out a lot of synchronous solutions to improve the operational efficiency of enterprises and project activities, in association with improving the quality and life of employees.

First, VRG directed to stop investing in area expansion for rubber plants focus only on intensive farming and improving the productivity of the trees. Examining comprehensively the land area under management. For the area of land inappropriate for rubber planting, it is necessary to swift into other crops to increase t revenue and avoid wasting land resources; for the remaining area, if it is not used effectively, it shall be returned to the locality for management and use according to regulations.

Second, fighting waste in the direction of minimizing indirect expenditures to focus resources on taking care of employees associated with business performance and project efficiency.

Third, restructuring the capital via prepayment of bank loans to reduce the financial burden on businesses in the short and long term, reduce interest expenses in business and investment. Implementing other financial solutions to facilitate settlement of necessary problems, ensure timely settlement of urgent expenditures such as salaries, social insurance, payables to the state budget, and stabilize production and business.

Forth, the Group has built the scheme on the comprehensive reconstruction of the group after equitization (period 2021 – 2025), which attaches to the reconstruction of investment resources according to research and develop the supplement of other industries such as investment in industrial parks and industrial clusters on rubber land according to the planning to increase the income of enterprises.

"The Vietnam Agriculture Newspaper has reflected in some aspects the difficult reality of the rubber industry in general and the Central Coast (North Central) region in particular that Vietnam Rubber Group, the local government, businesses and employees are joining hands and making single-minded efforts to overcome", the document of the Vietnam Rubber Corporation clarified.