Directive No. 125/1999/CT-BNN/KH on the development plan for agriculture and rural areas in 2000

DIRECTIVE

Developing the plan for agricultural and rural development in 2000

In 1999, despite having to deal with complex weather changes and the impact of the financial and monetary crisis, thanks to the leadership of the Party and State, the close guidance of the Government and local authorities, along with the great efforts of the people, agricultural production maintained its growth rate, national food security was ensured, and export volumes increased rapidly. However, 1999 also clearly revealed the weaknesses in economic structure, infrastructure, services, and state management systems within the sector, necessitating timely adjustments.

Moving into 2000, the Agricultural and Rural Development Sector must strive to continue maintaining an agricultural growth rate of 3.5 - 4%, aiming to complete the five-year plan targets for 1996-2000, achieve good results to mark the final year of the millennium, and commemorate significant national holidays in a practical manner, contributing to ending the decline in the economy's growth pace, while creating new changes to promote agricultural development towards increasing productivity, quality, and competitiveness; promoting comprehensive socio-economic development in rural areas in the following years.

To achieve these goals, in accordance with Directive No. 17/1999/CT-TTg dated June 30, 1999 of the Prime Minister on the construction of plans for economic and social development and the state budget for 2000, the Ministry requests that Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development and subordinate units focus on effectively carrying out the work of developing the sector's and their own plans for 2000. During the process of building the plan, it is necessary to thoroughly implement the following requirements:

1. On agriculture:

- The top priority task of agriculture is to continue developing production, ensuring solid national and regional food security, intensifying rice cultivation based on developing irrigation and applying high-yield varieties suitable for market demands, expanding maize and other crop areas.

- The development of industrial crops, fruits, vegetables, beans...must be based primarily on market demand and land and climate advantages in each region. Guide farmers to increase production of marketable and competitive crops, especially high-value export crops, forming concentrated production areas linked with processing industries. Address limitations in seedling, cultivation techniques, harvesting, transportation, storage, and processing stages to enhance productivity, quality, and reduce product costs.

- Implement measures to promote livestock industry development, including reducing feed costs and improving feed quality; improving veterinary conditions; enhancing breeding quality; improving rearing conditions; developing markets...

2. On forestry:

- Implement the project to plant 5 million hectares of forest. Perform well the basic investigation; land allocation; scientific research; investment preparation; seedling and capital preparation; staff training; strengthening management machinery.

- Continue to strongly implement measures to protect existing natural forests; prioritize funding to ensure the implementation of contracts signed with the people; in places where conditions permit, adopt policies allowing the people to directly benefit from the forest instead of receiving payments from the state budget.

- Prioritize the development of protected and rejuvenated protective and special-use forests; concentrate on planting new protective forests in prioritized areas, avoiding dispersion.

- Provide practical support for businesses of all economic sectors and farmers to develop productive forest planting.

3. On salt production:

Invest in upgrading, restructuring current salt fields to improve productivity, build new salt fields, develop salt processing to meet domestic industry and export quality requirements, increase income, and improve the living standards of salt workers.

4. Developing agricultural and forestry product processing industry:

- Develop plans for the preservation and processing of agricultural and forestry products tied to the establishment of raw material regions. First, ensure sufficient raw materials for sugar factories and other existing processing plants. Modernize processing technology and equipment. Implement specific measures to encourage the participation of various economic sectors in the development of the agricultural and forestry product processing industry.

- In 2000, there must be a strong shift in the preservation of agricultural and forestry products, particularly fresh goods (vegetables, fruits, meat...), to increase commercial value, enhance domestic consumption, and exports.

5. On water conservancy:

- Regarding embankments: Ensure the safety of the Red River Delta embankment system (especially the Hanoi embankment) and the old North Zone 4 embankment, ensure the safety of large reservoirs during the rainy season...effectively implement the program to upgrade and reinforce coastal embankments in the Red River Delta and the Mekong Delta.

- Regarding irrigation: Prioritize implementing projects to restore and upgrade irrigation works; strengthen and modernize the management and operation of irrigation works. Continue implementing the program to reinforce irrigation channels.

- Focus investments to accelerate the progress of construction of projects completed in the year, flood control projects, unfinished projects to ensure safety during the rainy season.

- Regarding new construction, develop irrigation facilities for coffee, tea, sugar cane, fruits, multi-purpose irrigation works in the Northern Midland and Mountainous Region, Central Vietnam, and the Central Highlands, truly linking water resource development with the provision of clean water, establishing raw material regions for processing industries and exports, poverty reduction, and national defense objectives; combine water resource and forestry measures to enhance the effectiveness of the works.

6. On rural development:

6. On rural development:

- Continue to support farmers in transforming relatively and moderately successful agricultural cooperatives, handle weak cooperatives, establish new cooperatives, and develop diverse forms of cooperative economy; innovate state-owned farms and forestry enterprises. Accelerate the process of equitization of state-owned enterprises, while reorganizing and investing reasonably to support production and business enterprises that are effective; apply leasing, contracting, selling, dissolving, or declaring bankruptcy for loss-making enterprises.

- Utilize state support for economic components, including non-state-owned economies, especially investment credit, effectively to achieve the highest socio-economic efficiency.

- Implement the Poverty Eradication Program (settlement, construction of new economic zones, and stabilization of voluntary migrants...), the National Clean Water and Rural Environmental Sanitation Program, the Support Program for 1,715 Poor Communes with Many Difficulties.

7. Develop science and technology:

In the coming period, one of the important tasks of science and technology is to contribute to accelerating the industrialization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas in accordance with Resolution No. 06 dated November 10, 1998 of the Politburo of the Eighth Congress "on some issues related to the development of agriculture and rural areas," focusing on applying modern biotechnology achievements, researching and applying new varieties to create breakthroughs in agricultural product productivity and quality, developing processing and preservation technologies...; creating conditions to promote research and production of machinery, equipment, and tools serving agricultural production and processing. In 2000, focus on implementing the following tasks:

- Build and organize the implementation of projects on crop and livestock varieties, forest tree varieties, including: investment in building technical infrastructure, breeding and popularizing new varieties. Prioritize the development of varieties suitable for each locality and export products.

- Select and increase investment to enhance the capacity of some leading institutions serving research and technology transfer.

8. Develop human resources:

Along with strengthening the capacity of training institutions, pay more attention to the training of state management cadres in the sector, cooperative cadres, technical staff and workers... in mountainous provinces and the Central Highlands, it is necessary to focus on training local cadres and ethnic minority cadres.

9. Strengthen the capacity of state management in the sector:

Adequately allocate cadres, strengthen working facilities for Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, enhance the system of agricultural extension, forestry extension, forest protection, veterinary services, plant protection, water management, clean water supply, and rural environmental sanitation agencies; build a system for inspecting the quality of agricultural and forestry products, crop and livestock varieties, forest tree varieties, and agricultural materials to be able to address emerging issues. Promote the implementation of decentralization in managing enterprises and the sector's technical infrastructure systems, socialize public service types.

10. Further improve major policies directly related to the sector, first and foremost those concerning land, labor, capital, and markets. Implement measures to develop domestic agricultural product markets; create favorable conditions for enterprises to strongly promote agricultural and forestry product exports, import sufficient and timely fertilizers, plant protection chemicals, veterinary drugs, feed raw materials, and agricultural materials.

11. Major requirements for the budget expenditure plan and the use of preferential state investment credit in 2000.

- For basic construction investment funds, including both budgetary and investment credit funds, it is necessary to review and allocate their use reasonably to achieve the highest socio-economic efficiency, closely meeting the sector's development goals and tasks. While still prioritizing high investment in irrigation, it is important to allocate a reasonable portion of funds to implement the crop and livestock variety program, invest in enhancing the research and technology transfer system, cadre training, and strengthening sectoral management systems; concentrate investment to complete key projects and put them into use as soon as possible, avoiding scattered and prolonged investments.

- Localities need to allocate and use agricultural land tax revenue reasonably for agricultural and rural development targets according to a structure and priority order suitable for specific conditions and the sector's orientation.

- The budget expenditure plan for public services needs to be built at a necessary, reasonable, and frugal level, eliminating state budget subsidies for enterprises, and not allocating budget funds to support scientific, health, and training activities of State-Owned Enterprises (except in special cases decided by the Prime Minister).

12. Progress in plan development:

In September 1999, work will be arranged with Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, State-Owned Enterprises, and subordinate units to coordinate plans and propose budget allocation schemes for the sector (the Ministry has issued Circular No. 2824 BNN/KH dated August 6, 1999 guiding the comprehensive agricultural and rural development plan for 2000).

The Ministry requests the Directors of Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development and heads of subordinate agencies to effectively implement this directive. The Ministry attaches a summary table of the sector's economic plan indicators for 2000 to be used by localities when developing their agricultural and rural development plans./.