Vietnam has many potentials and strengths in marine economic development. The 8th Conference of the Party Central Committee (term XII) issued Resolution No. 36-NQ/TW on "Strategy for sustainable development of Vietnam's marine economy to 2030, vision to 2045", determining that by 2030 Vietnam will become a strong maritime nation; basically achieving the criteria for sustainable development of the marine economy; forming a marine ecological culture; proactively adapt to climate change.

Attracting many large projects

According to Dr. Le Van Hung - Institute for Regional Sustainable Development Research (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) By 2023, Vietnam will have a total of 18 coastal economic zones (EZs) established and built. Coastal economic zones are mostly concentrated in the Central Coast region (11 zones), the Northern region has 4 zones and the Southern region has 3 zones (not to mention Ninh Co Economic Zone, Nam Dinh province, which has been added to the development planning of Vietnam's coastal economic zones).

Most coastal economic zones have very large planned areas, such as Van Phong economic zone with an area of ​​150,000 hectares, Nghi Son economic zone after adjustment is 106,000 hectares, Phu Quoc economic zone is nearly 60,000 hectares, and Van Don economic zone is more than 55,000 hectares.

Dr. Le Van Hung said that planning a large area is very important in building infrastructure synchronously and comprehensively in the long term. Helping coastal economic zones not simply be places to serve production and business, but these areas can become new urban areas creating a favorable environment for workers and residents.

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Chu Lai Port. Photo: GX

Regarding attracting investment capital, in about 20 years since their establishment, coastal economic zones have attracted many investment projects in production and business. As of 2021, there have been 506 foreign investment projects and 1,648 domestic investment projects attracted to coastal economic zones. Among them, Dinh Vu - Cat Hai coastal economic zone attracted the largest number of investment projects with 205 foreign investment projects, 105 domestic investment projects; Nghi Son Economic Zone attracts 19 foreign projects and 233 domestic projects; Dung Quat Economic Zone attracts 49 foreign projects and 195 domestic projects.

Coastal economic zones have attracted about 49 billion USD of foreign direct investment capital, 1,245.5 trillion VND of investment capital from domestic projects.

"Thanks to attracting large investment projects, coastal economic zones quickly became the leaders in contributing to the budget revenue of provinces/cities. Currently, many coastal economic zones contribute largely to the budget revenue of provinces such as Dung Quat economic zone contributing up to 80% of the province's total budget revenue, Chu Lai economic zone contributing 65%, Nghi Son economic zone contributing 61.3%, Vung Ang economic zone contributing 56%, Phu Quoc Economic Zone accounts for 43.2%. Creating large jobs for workers.

For disadvantaged provinces, this is an important budget source to help localities continue to invest in infrastructure to serve socio-economic development. For these localities, the coastal economic zone is truly the most important growth pole for industrial development and local budget revenue...", assessed Dr. Le Van Hung.

According to this position, coastal economic zones have begun to form a number of industry linkage clusters such as in Chu Lai economic zone for automobile production and assembly, for tourism in Phu Quoc, and petrochemical clusters in Dung Quat and Nghi Son economic zones...

Great contribution to local economic development

Dr. Le Van Hung acknowledged that coastal economic zones have initially made positive contributions to the development process for localities, especially the process of promoting industrial development and structural transformation to gradually narrow the development gap between regions.

Positive contributions include a number of coastal economic zones that have created clear changes in economic development for provinces and cities in terms of attracting investment capital, contributing to industrial value, export value, paying to the state budget, and improving worker productivity. Many coastal economic zones actually form a pillar and make great contributions to local economic development such as Nghi Son, Dinh Vu - Cat Hai, Vung Ang, Chu Lai, Dung Quat, and Phu Quoc economic zones.

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Chu Lai Economic Zone is contributing a large budget to Quang Nam province

Thanks to the formation and construction of coastal economic zones, socio-economic infrastructure in localities is gradually being invested and completed. Some coastal economic zones have had a clear transformation in terms of traffic connections, port systems and seaport logistics services, airports, industrial parks, training facilities, and medical services thanks to both investment capital from the budget and mobilization from the domestic and foreign private sectors.

However, according to Dr. Le Van Hung Besides positive results, coastal economic zones also reveal some limitations such as not really attracting quality investors with enough capacity to create branded products and competitiveness in the international market.

In particular, the attracted businesses have not created a major spillover impact on the development of industry clusters and supporting industries to create specialization in development. Therefore, links and cooperation between businesses in the zone, between FDI enterprises and the domestic sector, and between businesses in the zone and outside the zone are still very limited...

In addition, large businesses attracted to coastal economic zones currently mainly focus on resource-intensive and energy-consuming fields (such as petrochemical refining, steel, thermal power, chemicals, cement, and construction materials), so the risks of negative impacts on the environment are unavoidable, especially the impacts on the ecological environment in the long term.

In addition, the construction process, business activities and management of ecological environment protection are not really controlled and strictly protected. Many coastal economic zones still lack centralized wastewater treatment areas and hazardous waste and garbage collection areas.

To promote coastal economic zones to truly become driving forces for local and regional development, Dr. Le Van Hung proposed that Vietnam should research to have key pilot policies to create a development environment for 2 to 3 clusters of coastal economic zones by region. Only then will resources really be focused on perfecting infrastructure, social services and tools to protect and restore the ecological environment to create truly sustainable coastal economic zones.

At the same time, coastal economic zones need to pilot a number of development models such as green industrial parks and production and business activity zones that specialize/focus on a specific group of industries/fields.

Ho Giap