New locomotive force
On January 1, 1997, Binh Duong Province was officially re-established marking new development stage of the province. After settling down, by the end of January 1997, Binh Duong Provincial Temporary Executive of Party Committee met to discuss sustainable development of social economy, national defense and security, building of the Party, authority, fatherland front committee, and public unions in 1997 through major targets until 2000.
By February 1997, Binh Duong Provincial Party Committee issued its Resolution on duty orientation in 1997, affirming the general operations in the year in terms of force concentration, doctrine uniform, and staff organization for stable operations . Investigation and surveys were projected to be fastly implemented to figure out the situational factors of disadvantages, advantages, potentials, and strength of the province to determine economic structure and development orientation. On such basis, all forces were to be promoted to gain stable and continual economic growth rate for the new stage while enhancing economic efficiency to resolve social and cultural troubles for maintenance of political stability, social order and security, and intensified external relationship. Aside from the major tasks, the concentrated task of the year was to split, merge, and establish new districts and to elect National Assembly delegates and Provincial People’s Council staffs along with infraconstruction and administrative procedure reforms.
Concurrently, in the mentioned stage, the provincial organization has made great efforts to resolve drawbacks of the infrastructure by constructing and expanding many systems traffic, electricity, water supply, and telecommunication. They also implemented administrative procedure reforms orienting to one-stop-shop approaches for gradual creation of favored investment environment for domestic and foreign investment activities.
Fast development of industrial parks promotes production value from VND 94.7 billion in 1997 to VND 3,081 billion in 2000. In this photo: Workers are working at Rohto Vietnam Corporation located at Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park 1 (Photo: T.Minh)
Accelerated growth
On inheriting the achievements of the former Song Be Province, the newly re-established Binh Duong Province was featured with coherent and significant targets setting up and developing industrial parks on the developmental pathway. Binh Duong Provincial Party Committee, Authority, and the public made great efforts to keep the industrialization and modernization on track with priority for cencentrated industrial park development in a bid to create favored investment environment for domestic and foreign investment activities while facilitating in-depth growth as momentum for sustainable and stable local development.
In 10 years of reforms, provincial leaders were determined that only industry development and new construction could promote economic transition and growth. The problems were that they should rapidly make use of natural conditions and geographic locations to invest into technical infrastructure and favored investment environment to attract all economic components and foreign direct investment capital sources. Development of various economic forms successfully implemented by other nations in the world has always been the most attractive factor to lure investors.
Holding on to such thoughts, the first industrial park – Song Than Industrial Park 1, was established to enable 7 other industrial parks to be licensed by the government for construction and operations on an area of 1,500 hectares namely Song Than Industrial Parks 1 & 2, Dong An Industrial Park, Binh Duong Industrial Park, Viet Huong Industrial Park, Tan Dong Hiep Industrial Park, and Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park. Such industrial parks were in rapid growth to boost production value from VND 94.7 billion in 1997 to VND 3,081 billion in 2000.
The investment projects into industrial parks have contributed greatly to economic structure transition of the province to industrialization and modernization pathway. On the other hand, the establishment of industrial parks has attracted and boosted development of services and new urban areas. The most prominent development was the great contribution of industrial parks to economic growth to change socio-economic appearance of the province. The achievements of industrial parks were the solid proofs of righteous leadership of local Party Committee and authority. The favored investment environment and timely removed obstacles have made investors at ease with their activities in Binh Duong Province.
Reported by Tri Dung - Translated by Vi Bao