Southern localities improve industry promotion efficiency

Industry promotion models in southern localities have become more diverse with higher quality.

According to the Agency for Regional Industry Development (ARID) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in 2013, the southern cities and provinces disbursed VND54.06 billion of industry promotion funding, of which the national funding was VND7.73 billion and the local funding was VND46.33 billion. Last year, industry promotion activities also contributed significantly to the development of regional rural industry as they helped build 10 technical demonstration models to popularize new products; supported 11 industrial facilities to apply advanced machines and equipment into production; assisted 45 others to take part in domestic trade fairs and exhibitions and organized vocational training for 3,324 laborers.

Industry promotion centers of the southern cities and provinces also held energy efficiency and cleaner production activities such as energy auditing, building power saving models in households and schools and supporting cleaner production application in production.

Exchanges of experience to implement industry promotion, cleaner production activities and technological innovation towards environmentally-friendly production were also conducted in some provinces like Binh Duong, Binh Thuan, Ca Mau, Can Tho, Ben Tre and Vinh Long.

According to ARID, despite higher quality and more diverse models of the industry promotion projects as well as their good impacts on the regional development of rural industry, the industry promotion activities of regional cities and provinces still faced many obstacles. For example, although some projects had been approved, they could not be carried out as the involved businesses could not arrange their sources of capital. Furthermore, the projects mainly clustered in cities and provinces with developed industrial production or in selected localities.

To deal with these difficulties and improve the efficiency of industry promotion activities, ARID said that the departments of industry and trade of cities and provinces in the region need to coordinate in building common policies, encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in sectorial and regional links and value chains and ensuring harmonized benefits among the participants.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Le Duong Quang also asked the departments of industry and trade of these localities to accomplish the assigned industry promotion projects in 2014 on schedule, use the industry promotion funding on right purposes and promptly build industry promotion plans in 2015 with progress and quality guaranteed.

To do that, the localities need to keep a close watch on production and trade activities of their businesses, well coordinate with associations to remove their difficulties, encourage the businesses to continue research on technological innovation, enhance managerial capability, actively seek and expand consumption markets to reduce costs, sales prices and improve business efficiency.

Source: VEN