Party chief Nông Đức Mạnh visits and attends Bắc Kạn province re-establishment anniversary

Photo from Bac Kan Online

Previously, on December 31, 2006, General Secretary Nông Đức Mạnh and the senior Party and Government delegation had worked with the Standing Party Committee of Bắc Kạn Province and listened to the northern mountainous province’s performance over the past ten years of re-establishment and its 2007 agenda.

Since the re-establishment, the province’s government and people from seven ethnic groups of Kinh, Tày, Mông, Dao, Hoa, Sán Chay, Nùng have always united together rising over difficulties and challenges. Assisted with investment from the central government, the province has focused on infrastructure construction and improvement, rural and urban development and industrial sites. Over VND 4,000 billion has been spent on 2,200 projects. The electric grid, roads, schools, clinics and many other public facilities have been upgraded and built anew, including nearly 1,000 km inter-communal and inter-hamlet roads, new cultural centers for groups of communes and communication connections to marginal areas. The province has constructed hundreds of irrigation and water supply works that have helped to facilitate the restructuring of crops and livestock, increase the percentage of agricultural land, meet people’s daily-life demand, and raise the forest coverage to 55% of the total area. The trade, service and tourism sector has been promoted to attain the average annual growth rate of 17.2%. Export turnover reached US$ 4.6 million per annum. The average GDP growth rate was 10.8% per year. In 2006, over VND100 billion worth of tax revenue was paid into the budget, six times as much as 1997’s level, gradually meeting the province’s spending needs. The per capita income has tripled. The share of poor households has been reduced to 41.4% under the new poverty threshold. Many significant achievements have been made in education, healthcare, culture, sport, national security and defense. The provincial Party Committee and authority have paid great attention to Party building and the construction of a powerful and healthy local government and social organizations. The people’s unity has been maintained. In 2007, the province will strive for an average growth rate of 17.2% across all fields.

General Secretary Nông Đức Mạnh hailed the achievements gained by Bắc Kạn Province over the past ten years. He advised that, as a disadvantaged mountainous province, each and every local official, Party member and local citizen should renew his way of thinking and work, be self-reliant, and not expect assistance from the central government. The province should be selective to invest in industrial zones, making sure that the environment and natural landscape be not disturbed. It should also make use of the specific conditions of local soil and available natural resources to develop a commodity economy strictly based on market demand.

To fulfill its socio-economic development goals, it is imperative that Bắc Kạn boosts the training, retraining and planning of qualifying personnel for the new period of development and integration. The General Secretary requested Government departments to pay greater attention to Bắc Kạn, especially in strategy making, personnel work and finance for poverty alleviation and socio-economic development.

Speaking at the function, Deputy PM Phạm Gia Khiêm also lauded the province’s achievements while listing shortcomings to overcome. He highlighted the fact the province possesses a great deal of resources that are left untapped, such as mining and mineral processing, forestry, agriculture and services. When it comes to making policy for socio-economic development, Bắc Kạn should take initiatives to select investors for investment in various economic sectors, especially industry. On this occasion, on behalf of the State President, the Deputy PM awarded Bắc Kạn with the Labor Medal, First Class.

By Nguyên Hồ