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There are about 8,000 businesses investing in agriculture. Photo: Nguyen Thanh

Speaking at the Forum entitled "Business accompanying agriculture, farmers and rural areas in 2019" held by the General Association of Agriculture and Rural Development on the morning of January 22, in Hanoi, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Hoang Van Thang said: In recent years, the number of enterprises investing in agriculture has increased sharply in many areas such as cultivation, husbandry, fisheries, agricultural product processing...

Mr. Nguyen Do Anh Tuan - Director of the Institute for Researching Policies and Strategies for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) further analyzed: Investment in agriculture is clearly changing as the number of businesses with large-scale investments are increasing. "For example, in the field of fruit processing, projects which see large scale investment and modern technological lines often have orders immediately, even orders for up to 5- 10 years. And if we keep doing small business, we can't sell it all,” Mr. Tuan said.

Around this issue, Mr. Nguyen Hoa Cuong - Deputy Director of Enterprise Development Department (Ministry of Planning and Investment) added: Currently, the Ministry of Planning and Investment has issued a Circular guiding the support and encouraging businesses to invest in agriculture, support start-ups, and remove investment barriers. Specifically, the target set in the coming time is to attract about 80,000-100,000 enterprises with investment activities in agriculture. In which, there are about 3,000-4,000 large-scale enterprises and 6,000-8,000 medium-scale enterprises investing in this area.

Although there are many favorable conditions and mechanisms to encourage businesses to invest in agriculture, in fact, many businesses said that enterprises investing in agriculture are still facing many difficulties.

Typically, agricultural enterprises find it difficult to access loans from banks, especially small businesses because the business plan is not feasible, does not meet requirements for mortgage loan. In addition, the ability of agricultural enterprises to access the international market is still weak due to the lack of information on the market and regulations of international trade, making the market access of agricultural enterprises very limited.

To deeply analyze the reality of the fertilizer industry, Mr. Vu Xuan Hong - Deputy General Director of Lam Thao Supe Phosphate and Chemicals Joint Stock Company expressed the view: To increase the competitiveness for manufacturing enterprises, the Plant Protection Department (MARD) should consider specific conditions for licensing fertilizer production, should not grant permission for rampant production, should have a specific plan based on domestic fertilizer demand.

In the context of increasingly fierce competition, counterfeit goods are still popular, traditional and long-standing fertilizer enterprises will face difficulties. Besides, the State needs to have policies to attract other import sources. Currently, NPK fertilizer producers in Vietnam are completely passive in finding raw materials. Some types of imported fertilizers are completely imported and mainly come from one or two fixed markets without reserves.

A representative of TH Group gave a view from the cooperation between businesses and farmers. TH Group is known for its initial project of TH Fresh MILK Project with the brand "TH True MILK", which is one of the world's most modern fresh milk projects in terms of scale and technology. The project was implemented from October 2009 with an investment of $US 1.2 billion with a farm cluster in Nghia Dan (Nghe An). Since 2017, TH Group continues to expand investment in dairy farming in the northern border provinces.

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“Attracting farmers to join the production chain is the first thing that TH Group cares about when implementing the project. If we do not comply with production standards, we cannot cooperate together and there is no opportunity to cooperate in our homeland. Therefore, TH Group expects the Government and MARD to have a policy of training farmers and cooperatives which is broader in terms of quality standards, so as to strictly comply with domestic and international production standards/regulations, along with policies to encourage businesses to participate in training new skills for farmers in agricultural production,” said the TH Group representative.