Final article: Potential needs to be “awakened”
More than 134 km of Ho Chi Minh Road running through 4 districts of Nghe An province is considered the "backbone" for the localities in the midland and mountainous areas to develop their economy and society. People living on both sides of this road have known how to exploit the potential to stabilize their lives, such as: planting forests, growing vegetables, expanding services... However, many localities have not really focused on investing and creating conditions for people to establish businesses on this road.
(Baonghean) -More than 134 km of Ho Chi Minh Road running through 4 districts of Nghe An province is considered the "backbone" for the localities in the midland and mountainous areas to develop their economy and society. People living on both sides of this road have known how to exploit the potential to stabilize their lives, such as: planting forests, growing vegetables, expanding services... However, many localities have not really focused on investing and creating conditions for people to establish businesses on this road.
The greatest potential, first of all, is the huge area of forestry land for growing raw material forests. Over the past decade, along with the support policies of the State, local people living along the Ho Chi Minh Highway have invested in and actively planted raw material forests. In the past 5 years, each year forest growers have exploited a large amount of raw wood to sell to wood processing factories in Nghe An, Thanh Hoa and Ha Tinh. Tan Ky district plants 1,000 hectares of acacia and cajuput forests each year, and up to now the whole district has about 10,000 hectares of raw material forests. If the whole district exploits 1,000 hectares of forest each year, the volume of raw wood obtained will be about 70,000 m3 of raw wood. Of that, forest growers will sell to some small-capacity local wood peeling factories, while the rest will be found by forest owners themselves.
The transportation network is quite convenient, forest growers can rent cars to transport wood to large wood processing factories in and outside the province to sell. That is the dependence, the opportunity for factories to squeeze prices, or a group of people who specialize in buying raw wood to squeeze prices right in the forest. Forest growers currently have 2 forms of selling. One is to exploit it themselves, rent a car to transport it and sell it directly to the factory. The other is that forest growers sell the whole forest to traders, and the traders exploit and transport it themselves. Why do they have to sell in the second form? People said that the reason is that forest growers do not have the conditions in terms of human resources and means to exploit, plus the factory is too far away, so forest growers face many difficulties.
A corner of the makeshift market at the intersection of Hanh Lam and Thanh Chuong communes.
Perhaps, by grasping the potential of large raw material forests on the Ho Chi Minh road, Thanh Nam - Ninh Binh Corporation has invested in building an industrial wood processing factory in Nhu Xuan district (Thanh Hoa), the border section between Thanh Hoa and Nghe An. The factory's operations over the years have created direct jobs for hundreds of workers at the factory and thousands of indirect workers, who are forest planters and forest exploitation teams. Forest planters in districts along the Ho Chi Minh road in our province are dreaming of having a large-scale industrial wood processing factory right in their locality.
During the days of experience on Ho Chi Minh road, we encountered many forest owners who were not very happy because the price of wood was going down. A forest owner named Cuong, in Thanh Huong commune (Thanh Chuong) confided: “My family has more than 2 hectares of cajuput forest, planted 7 years ago. Listening to the introduction of my neighbors, I went directly to some factories in and outside the province to consult the price. After knowing the selling price of 960 thousand VND/ton at the wood processing factory in Cua Lo, I hired 4 workers to exploit, peel the bark and rented a car to transport the wood to sell to the factory”. It turns out that each car trip can carry 13 tons, after deducting the expenses for the car owner, the forest owner only has 7 million VND left. More than 2 hectares of acacia forest, after 7 years of planting and caring, Mr. Cuong's family estimates a profit of about 80 - 90 million VND. Wiping away the sweat rolling down his cheeks, Mr. Cuong added: “If there were a large-capacity industrial wood processing factory on the Ho Chi Minh Highway, we foresters would have less trouble and our income from forestry would be higher. That is also the wish of foresters in these midland and mountainous districts!”
Foresters must take care of their own output for raw wood.
The midland and mountainous districts of our province have the strength to develop large-scale livestock farming and other agricultural products. However, along the Ho Chi Minh trail through the four districts mentioned above, there is no large-scale wholesale market for large-scale livestock and agricultural products. Tan Ky district is the locality with the largest herd of buffaloes and cows in the province, with more than 24 thousand heads. However, for many years, Tan Ky district has planned to build a buffalo and cow market, but it has not been built yet. Tan Ky district has a convenient transportation network from North to South via Ho Chi Minh trail, with provincial roads connecting neighboring districts to Vinh. Tan Ky people have experience in raising buffaloes and cows for sale. Therefore, the establishment of a buffalo and cow market in Tan Ky is very necessary.
What we find interesting is that the fishbone traffic network connecting to Ho Chi Minh Road has not received much investment from localities, leading to many stretches of road tens of kilometers long without residential areas. Thanh Xuan Commune (Thanh Chuong) is a border area with Ha Tinh Province, on the surface there is a difference between the two localities. On the other side is Son Tien Commune (Huong Son - Ha Tinh), the population living on both sides of Ho Chi Minh Road is dense, shops and other services are bustling, while on this side is Thanh Xuan Commune (Thanh Chuong - Nghe An) where very few people live along Ho Chi Minh Road.
If anything, they are just families who have been farming for generations, not doing any business or services. Turning into the trail following the traffic sign, we found our way to Thanh Xuan commune headquarters. With great difficulty, our motorbikes managed to cross a 3 km long stretch of rocky, bumpy dirt road connecting to the asphalt road to the commune People's Committee headquarters. Talking about exploiting the potential of the Ho Chi Minh road, Mr. Nguyen Khanh Thanh - Chairman of the Commune People's Committee, said: The Ho Chi Minh road running through Thanh Xuan commune is 5.6 km long, in reality, the locality has not exploited that advantage.
Finding out the reason, Mr. Thanh admitted that the fishbone roads connecting to Ho Chi Minh road have not been invested in hardening, so traveling is difficult, people do not want to go to work on both sides of Ho Chi Minh road. Even the national power grid from the commune center to Ho Chi Minh road is very poor, the power quality is weak, not meeting the needs of business services. Some people of Thanh Xuan commune who are currently living on both sides of Ho Chi Minh road, said: The locality needs to invest in asphalting the 533 road from the commune People's Committee connecting to Ho Chi Minh road, then people will have the opportunity to go here to work.
Observing, the area of industrial tea in Thanh Xuan commune is very small, mainly cassava and acacia forests, while neighboring localities: Thanh Mai, Thanh Tung, Thanh Ha ... mainly grow industrial tea. Mr. Thanh explained: The characteristic of Thanh Xuan's hilly land is gravel soil, not suitable for tea trees, so for a long time, people have grown very little tea, but specialize in growing acacia and cassava. Currently, the area of cassava in the locality is 230 hectares and more than 800 hectares of acacia. However, in terms of economic development orientation, Thanh Xuan considers tea trees to be the tree with the highest income. Therefore, in the planning of new rural construction, the locality plans to grow 175 hectares of industrial tea, and at the same time continue to invest in roads and electricity on Ho Chi Minh road to encourage people to settle down and exploit the potential on both sides of Ho Chi Minh road. Or like Thanh Mai commune (Thanh Chuong), currently there is not a single meter of asphalt road other than Ho Chi Minh road passing through, so the Ho Chi Minh road section through the commune is sparsely populated.
Through the days of experience on Ho Chi Minh road, we have thought that in any locality where the fishbone traffic system is conveniently connected to Ho Chi Minh road, and has a good quality national electricity grid, there will be a dense population, rich and diverse types of services. Otherwise, it will be the opposite. Therefore, to exploit the great potential on Ho Chi Minh road, localities need to pay attention to these two factors.
In early 2013, May Industrial Joint Stock Company, with investment consultancy from North Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank, started construction of Nghe An Wood Processing Factory in Nghia Dan District Industrial Park. The factory has a total investment capital of 500 million USD, with a capacity of 8,800 m3of wood bars/year and 400,000 m3 of fiberboard/year, expected to be put into operation in the first quarter of 2014. This is the largest and most modern wood processing factory in Southeast Asia. After being put into operation, the factory will annually consume a large volume of raw wood, contributing to solving the output of raw forest products, creating jobs for thousands of direct workers and raw forest workers. The midland and mountainous districts of Nghe An can see this as an opportunity to exploit forestry land, convert crops, and increase income for people...
Article and photos: Nguyen Hoang
