The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has finalised planning for the key southern economic region to 2010 and worked out orientation development goals to 2020, prioritising several main groups of agro-products.
The focus will be on developing agriculture commodities, as well as exploiting the region’s tourism potential.
The region, consisting of HCM City and seven provinces of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh, Long An and Tien Giang, covers more than 30,000sq.km (9.2 per cent of the total national land area) and has 14.7 million residents, accounting for 17.7 per cent of Viet Nam’s population.
The region plays an important role in agricultural and rural development across the country, supplying food and materials to the processing industry for both domestic consumption and export, especially agro-products that are highly competitive in the export market such as rubber, pepper, cashew and cassava.

In the past years, the region has transformed its crop and livestock farming mechanisms, but their effectiveness was not high because production development did not go hand-in-hand with planning.
Farmers in the region have reduced the areas under rice, coffee trees, and other cash crops that have small markets and expanded the cultivation of lucrative crops including rubber, cashew, grass for livestock, vegetables and ornamental flowers.
The ministry said that by 2010, the region will have reduced its total farm land by 85,000ha to only 1.6 million hectares, of which HCM City will manage 67,470ha.
The region is expected to convert 100,000ha of farm land for industrial and residential use between 2006 and 2010.
Priority will be given to developing four key groups of agro-products with competitive potential and an advantage in the Southeast Asian as well as world markets. These are vegetables; ornamental flowers, trees and fruit; industrial crops for export (rubber, pepper, cashew and coffee trees); livestock; and annual cash crops such as cassava, sugarcane, groundnut and tobacco.
Tourism potential
The southern key economic region, with its core being HCM City — the nation’s second-largest cultural, economic and political centre — has been identified as one of the country’s most important tourism centres.
Tourism experts say the region has a great diversity of natural features and biological systems, ranging from mountains, plains and marshy land to the ocean and islands.
It has many attractive tourist sites such as Cat Tien National Park, Con Dao Island, Binh Chau - Phuoc Buu and Rung Sat - Can Gio nature reserves, Binh Chau hot springs, Ba Den Mountain, Dau Tieng and Tri An lakes, and famous beaches like Long Hai, Phuoc Hai, Vung Tau and Con Dao.
The region is home to many ethnic groups with a long history of struggles against foreign invaders.
The region furthermore offers relics of the ancient kingdom of Phu Nam, the Cu Chi underground tunnels, the former revolutionary base Rung Sat and a variety of handicraft villages.
The number of international tourists that passed through Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City last year came to 1.7 million.
Statistics show that the number of foreign tourists arriving in the region accounts for 40 per cent of tourists nationwide. The number of domestic visitors account for more than 30 per cent of the total and income from tourism accounts for 45 per cent of the national total.
Deputy head of HCM City Tourism Department Le Nhut Tan said the number of international tourists to the city last year totalled more than 2 million for the first time ever, and total income from the city’s tourism sector last year was VND13.5 trillion.
It is expected that in 2010, the whole region will receive 14.4 million tourists, including 3.3 million foreigners, generating at least US$1.9 billion in income annually. By 2020, the region should receive 21.5 million visitors (including 5.5 million foreigners) and generate income of $5.26 billion a year.

Source: VNECONOMY