Foreign projects let down Phu Tho

The Phu Tho Provincial People’s Committee recently revoked the investment certificates of five foreign invested projects, licenced in 2006 and 2007, due to delayed implementation.

The revoked projects include three Taiwanese-backed projects, with Dong Thai Duong Company Ltd.,’s $4.5 million project to produce and trade in paper, pulp, paper-based products and handicraft products, Phu Hao Company’s $2 million project to process export-oriented farm produce and Green World Company’s $1 million project engaged in vegetable oil processing.

The remaining revoked projects comprise Hong Kong-backed Leosco Company Ltd.,’s $3 million project to make cotton-stuffed toys, and South Korean-backed Phu Tho Joint Stock Company’s $43 million project to build urban infrastructure.

The move followed the Phu Tho Department of Planning and Investment’s (DPI) revision of foreign-invested projects’ financial capacities. The review came in after local authorities saw that the province’s investment environment had been hurt by big licenced foreign invested projects being given land, but lacking the financial muscle to carry out projects.

“We have urged them so many times to implement their projects. But they have done nothing. They said they were cash-strapped due to the long economic crisis,” said DPI director Nguyen Dinh Cuc.

“But we cannot wait them any longer because they have badly affected the province’s investment environment,” Cuc told VIR.

According to the DPI, the province had given the investors all possible preferential conditions about land sites, investment procedures and infrastructure works such as roads, electricity and clean water provision. But, the projects became infeasible several months after they were licenced.

“Their existing sites are currently not coveted by other investors. But in case where those investors can prove to quickly boost the implementation of their projects, we will consider [the re-licensing of their projects],” Cuc said.

DPI vice director Ho Dai Dung said his agency would continue to investigate the capacities of other licenced foreign invested projects under construction in the province in the coming time.

“If investors fail to realise their projects like what they have vowed, their licences will be revoked and their already-given sites will be transferred to other  potential investors,” Dung said.

Phu Tho licenced nearly 20 foreign- and locally-owned projects in 2010’s first half, in which there were 12 projects invested in the province’s Thuy Van and Trung Ha industrial parks and Bach Hac Industrial Cluster, with total registered investment capital of more than VND1.3 trillion ($68.4 million).

At present, Phu Tho is home to 87 foreign-invested projects with total registered investment capital of over $480 million. Of those, 78 projects are in local industrial parks and small-scaled industrial clusters.