Golf ready to tee off

illustration photo

Under the prime ministerial Decision 1946/QD-TTg dated November 26, 2009 approving Vietnam’s golf course development plan until 2020, the country will have 90 golf courses in 34 cities and provinces.

But the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) has now asked the government to allow it to hoist the number of golf courses to be developed in Vietnam by 2020 to 118 from the current 90.

An MPI report on Vietnam’s golf development just submitted to the government said these 118 golf courses ticked all the right boxes. They boasted high tourism potential and were located on sandy and bare hilly and mountainous areas where agricultural cultivation  was not possible.

The new number of 118 new golf courses would be absolutely final, said the report.

According to the MPI, many provinces including Thanh Hoa, Thai Nguyen, Thai Binh, Quang Ninh, Dak Lak and Haiphong city had also asked the government to allow them to build 12 golf courses and put these courses onto the country’s golf course development planning list.

For example, Bac Ninh People’s Committee early this year asked the government to list its 36-hole Hap Lo golf course in Vietnam’s golf course development plan towards 2020.

Recently, Quang Ngai People’s Committee also agreed on a plan to build the province-based Van Tuong golf course.

The committees both said the courses met government planning requirements and would not adversely affect the environment and rice-cultivation land.

The 90 golf courses with total registered investment capital of over $24.48 billion are planned in the northern central and central coastal region (29 courses), the south-western region (21 courses), the Red River Delta (17 courses), the northern mountainous midland region (11 courses), the central highlands region (eight courses) and the Mekong Delta (four courses).

Of these 90 courses, 24 are operational with already-disbursed investment capital of $75.62 million, 25 are under construction, 13 have already been granted investment certificates but remain on paper and 23 have their investment proposals agreed in principle. The MPI has proposed to scrap the remaining five. Thus, the government’s existing golf course development plan will make room for 85 golf courses only.

However, recent inspections of localities’ golf course situation jointly conducted by the MPI and ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development, Natural Resources and Environment, and Science and Technology showed that another 27 golf courses in 13 provinces were found not to be subject to Decision 1946/QD-TTg and were unsuitable for the provinces’ land use planning.

Of these, five projects were under construction and five had been granted investment certificates before the decision was compiled.

MPI Minister Vo Hong Phuc said the provinces had failed to follow the government’s decision.

Thus, the total number of planned and unplanned golf courses in Vietnam has risen to 124, including 85 golf courses already planned by the government, 27 unplanned courses and 12 proposed to be supplemented in the planning.

However, Phuc said that only 118 of 124 golf courses were listed in the new planning. This included 85 government-planned courses and 33 of 39 unplanned and proposed courses.

“But, besides compulsory criteria and conditions prescribed in the Decision 1946/QD-TTg, we need to have more stringent regulations on new planning, such as rules on implementation speed, investors’ financial capacity and environmental protection,” Phuc said.

The MPI also said the 118 golf courses would put Vietnam on par with other countries in the region including the Philippines (100 courses), Malaysia (230 courses) and Indonesia (152 courses)

Before the current planning regime was introduced, Vietnam housed 166 golf courses, but 76 of these, covering 1,500 hectares, were then removed when the planning came into force as they failed to meet the government’s criteria.