20 urbanization years of Binh Duong province - Practical issues – Part 4

Industrialization and urbanization are two processes happening during the socio-economic development in Binh Duong. With the aim to construct adequate material facilities for a type-1 city directly under the Central in the 2016-2020 period, industrial production continues to be a tool to implement the pioneering mission.

Modernization in industrial production

According to Dr Pham Van Bo, Deputy Director of Construction Manager Academy (Ministry of Construction), during the industrialization process, Binh Duong province has actively seize the opportunity to utilize geographical advantages, reform administrative procedures, and create an open business environment to attract investments. In order to be an attractive destination of investors in the future, Binh Duong needs to simplify tax policies to improve efficiency.

According to experts, mobilizing all resources will help the province to accomplish the goal of industrialization and urbanization.

Photo: Thu Dau Mot city viewed from above

In addition, the province should create flexible, qualified labor markets to facilitate investments; maintain particular foreign policies to be in line with our its own economic characteristics. Binh Duong has performed well the hard connection – infrastructure; the soft connection – human resource cultivation – should also be concerned. The soft connection is the social capital of the future city and is also important to the modernization in manufacture. The hard and soft connections support each other.

MA - Architects Huynh Van Minh, Director of Binh Duong Urban Development Planning Institute, said the first element of the next period was “Regional developing linkages”. The future growth of the province will depend much on these linkages. 

Some experts said that the current industrial technology of the province was at average and low level. Therefore, Binh Duong should pay much attention to enhance technological level of manufacture. Regarding service and agriculture, the objective is to reach a higher level in all socio-economic fields; among these, logistics should be further developed with closed services to make way for modern industrial development. In the coming time, Binh Duong will have 35 industrial parks, 18 industrial clusters; industrial growth rate is forecasted to reach 16% / year. The province should focus on timber exports, textiles, leather, rubber, engineering, construction materials, electricity – electronics… Auxiliary industry must maximize their efficiency, accounting for 30% or more of industrial production value.

The required capital for socio-economic infrastructure is very large. Natural resources and minerals of Binh Duong are not plentiful. Therefore, the province must reply on official development assistance (ODA) funds and foreign direct investments (FDI). This leads to a unsustainable development, if aid loans or FDI were suddenly diverted.

The biggest advantage of Binh Duong is the rich land resource that is very beneficial to industrial and urban development. Binh Duong is also located at the most developing area of ​​Vietnam, and is connected with Highlands, Central region, and HCMC. With a good strategy and specific action plans, Binh Duong could reach the growth peak.  

Industrialization helps in accelerating the urbanization pace

MA Trinh Xuan Thang, Political Academy of Region IV, assessed that the role of the industrial parks to the urbanization process in Binh Duong province had been shown obviously. Firstly, industrial parks have attracted investment projects, contributing to the economic restructuring. With preferential policies, Binh Duong becomes one of the five provinces, cities that attract the most FDI capital. At present, occupancy rates at provincial industrial parks reach more than 60%, helping provincial economic structure to shift strongly towards manufacture – service and increasingly decrease agricultural production.

Meanwhile, industrial and service growth leads to the need for industrial and urban infrastructure. Therefore, the province has developed economic – technical infrastructure, like transportation, communications… In recent years, Binh Duong has invested thousands billion VND in building traffic networks between districts, towns, city in the province, and localities within the southern key economic zone. Industrial production and services in industrial parks have attracted more and more rural laborers, and laborers from other provinces to live and work in Binh Duong.

Besides, during the industrial development process, population growth problem requires synchronous infrastructure to form urban areas surrounding industrial clusters. Experts showed that new urban areas would be formed corresponding to the scale and production level of industrial clusters. Mastering the principle of "pulling engineers to villages", bringing workers to communes, provincial rural areas will soon become urban.

Currently, Binh Duong is suffering an imbalance of urban population distribution. Provincial southern area gathers many industrial parks, thus urban areas are densely populated, while the northern area does not have many industrial parks and is still a rural area. Therefore, provincial industrial park planning shifted to the north is a lucid and strategic policy of Binh Duong.

Urbanization and industrialization are taking place at the same time in Binh Duong. To accelerate this process, the province needs to keep improving the business environment, administrative procedures; especially, the infrastructure modernization, human resource’s qualification improvement are the ways for Binh Duong to be an attractive destination of investors. Mobilizing all resources will help the province to accomplish the goal of industrialization and urbanization.

Reported by Phung Hieu – Translated by Ngoc Huynh