NA calls for better land management

National Assembly deputies on September 22 expressed their concerns at the waste and ineffective management of state farm and forestry land in recent years, asking the Government to reconsider its planning.

During the morning session, which focused on the management of Vietnam's forest and farming from 2004 to 2014, Ksor Phuoc, Chairman of the National Assembly Council of Ethnic Affairs, said the management of farm and forestry land was rather ineffective, leading to a huge waste of the country's land resource.

Currently there are 870 agricultural and forest farms nationwide, occupying an area of 8 million hectares of land.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan. Photo: VNA

Ksor Phuoc said the report from the NA's Standing Committee revealed that while the country had a huge farm and forestry land area, the contribution that these resources made to the state budget in the past 10 years was low. The state gets only about VND 90,000 (USD 4) per hectare.

"The reason was that the use of land was ineffective, land allocation was not in compliance with initial purposes, leading to low production efficiency and low productivity," he said.

He added that there are signs of violations in allocating land to individuals who are not directly involved in agriculture production.

"There are cases in which these individuals conducted transfers of land use rights, illegally built houses or concrete service works in the allocated land area," he said, adding that there are farm or forestry owners who even transfer the land to individuals from other localities not to do agriculture production but to sell for profit.

Phung Quoc Hien, Head of the National Assembly's Committee for Finance and Budget, said bad planning had played a part in this situation.

"There are owners who can't do well on the farms or forestry land but still hold on to it. If we allocate those lands to local residents who can really conduct proper forestation, many bare hills would have been covered with trees," Hien said.

He said that it was necessary to reorganize these farms and forestry lands by allocating land to the right people.

"If it was a waste of natural resources, the Government needs to be decisive and withdraw the land and allocate to local residents for real farm and forestry work," said Huynh Ngoc Son, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly.