News

Over the past 8 years, due to the entanglement of titanium mineral planning and the national mineral reserve area, dozens of projects in many fields in Binh Thuan province – home to the largest titanium reserves in the country have been immobilized, causing great waste. The Government’s Decree No. 51/2021/ND-CP on mineral management in national mineral reserve areas has just been issued by the Government to open this bottleneck for Binh Thuan province to develop. 

A series of projects are waiting.

According to binh Thuan TN-MT Department, the Prime Minister’s Decision No. 654 of 2014 on approving national mineral reserves has designated 48 national mineral reserve areas (by 2020) for 10 types of minerals, of which up to 23 titanium mineral reserve areas are mainly concentrated in Binh Thuan province.

Most of the titanium reserve area in Binh Thuan province is distributed along the coast, where there are favorable conditions for implementing projects that are considered local strengths such as tourism, renewable energy … QD654 has only designated the area of the national mineral reserve area, but not enough basis to implement projects on the surface.

Therefore, when considering the investment policy of projects on the surface, Binh Thuan province faces many difficulties due to insufficient legal basis. This has resulted in 33 projects having been approved for investment and 66 projects requested by Binh Thuan province for investment licenses cannot be implemented due to overlap with the national mineral reserve planning.

The Department of Industry and Trade of Binh Thuan province said that only by 2020, through review, the locality has up to 19 wind power projects overlapping with the zoning plan for exploration, exploitation, processing and use of titanium ore, so it cannot be implemented. 

Not only that, the above-mentioned mineral reserve planning also affects dozens of tourism projects that are considered to have a great impact on the economic and social development of Binh Thuan province.

According to the orientation of the Mui Ne National Tourism Area Development Plan approved by the Government, many projects implemented will provide the market with quality tourism products. However, the overlap between the tourism development plan and the slow-to-be dismantled titanium mining plan has affected the call and implementation of the aforementioned strategic tourism projects,” said Director of Binh Thuan Bui The Nhan Provincial Department of Tourism.

Remove difficulty

Secretary of Binh Thuan Duong Van An Provincial Party Committee said that if titanium mining in areas near residential areas, tourist areas, coasts will risk causing landslides, sand floods, groundwater depletion … seriously affecting the natural environment, landscape, people’s life and economic activities; at the same time, it also creates tensions among the people, conflicts of interest between other project investors in general and tourism in particular and titanium mining units… Previously, due to the titanium planning problems, although many investors registered to invest in projects in this area, the province could not approve, affecting the investment environment and inhibiting the economic and social development of the province.

The good news to Binh Thuan province is that on April 1, 2021, the Government issued Decree 51 on mineral management in national mineral reserve areas. In particular, the new regulations will allow Binh Thuan province to implement economic and social development projects in the national mineral reserve areas (the project is approved within 50 years, no more than 70 years in but where the reserves are); at the same time, it allows the adjustment of area, taking out the area of the approved national mineral reserve area.

According to Binh Thuan’s leader, in order to promote investment attraction in the coming time, Binh Thuan province continues to build a number of mechanisms and policies to attract specific investment to support and attract investment in industrial parks, industrial clusters, tourism projects, coastal entertainment and entertainment areas of national scale; Focus on supporting investors in the process of implementing the project, holding direct dialogues to solve and remove difficulties and obstacles for investors.