HANOI, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Vietnamese government is striving
to turn the Mekong delta into a base of high-quality rice
production and the biggest aquatic producer in Southeast Asia.
   For many years, the Mekong delta has been Vietnam's rice bowl,
where the volume of rice produced accounts for about 50 percent of
the country's total rice output and more than 90 percent of
Vietnam's rice export volume.
   However, a sharp downturn in the price of rice in world makets
last year had resulted in big losses for rice growers in the delta.
   The Vietnamese government decided to diversify crops and
improve rice quality in the Mekong delta, zoning off 1.8 million
hectare (ha) for rice cultivation in the region, including one
million ha for high-quality rice for export by 2005.
   The zoned-off area for rice growing is to be properly irrigated
to ensure the region's total rice output remains between 15
million tons to 16 million tons a year.
   The Vietnamese government has issued a list of 85 irrigation
works to serve agricultural development in the delta. Those
projects will be carried out with investment from the central
government.
   According to statistics released by the Mekong Delta Rice
Research Institute, regional farmers are currently using more than
100 rice varieties. This large number of rice varieties fails to
ensure a uniform and high quality of export rice.
   Restructuring rice strains to better meet market requirements
and raising the quality of processing and preservation has been
defined as an urgent and necessary step toward improving the
competitiveness of Vietnam's rice in the world market.
   The government of the country is, therefore, required to invest
in supplying local farmers with standard rice varieties to reduce
the percentage of broken rice and the rate of mixed grains, thus
giving Vietnam's export rice greater competitiveness.
   The delta has mapped out a plan to build 70 rice drying systems,
each with a capacity ranging from 10 tons to 30 tons per hour. As
a result, about 4 million tons of rice in the delta will be dried
by industrial lines in the near future. New drying systems will be
built close to processing establishments.
   The delta will build more storage systems with a combined
capacity of 600,000 tons in the traffic hub provinces such as Kien
Giang, Long An, Can Tho, An Giang and Soc Trang.
   Vietnam's Southern Food Corporation plans to install 60 rice
polishing and sorting lines, each with a capacity of 5-6 tons/hour,
in the near future.
   Local farmers are expected to increase their income by 4,500
billion Vietnamese dong (300 million U.S. dollars) a year once the
above-said plan is successfully carried out.
   In addition to the development of high-quality rice, the Mekong
delta is striving to turn itself into the biggest aquatic producer
in Southeast Asia by 2005.
   The Vietnamese government in November last year set a target of
expanding the Mekong delta's aquaculture area to more than 700,000
ha, its netted output to 1.7 million tons, and its export earnings
to more than 1.5 billion dollars or half of the country's total
aquatic product value by 2005. 
   The delta, actually, is forecast to net 1.8 million tons of
aquatic products, including more than 250,000 tons of shrimps,
making up 60 percent of the country's total aquatic output netted.

   And then, the country's largest delta is to raise its aquatic
output to more than two million tons, including 400,000 tons of
shrimps, or 53 percent of the total.
   To achieve the aforementioned objectives, Mekong delta
provinces have been carrying out 65 medium and large-scale
projects on infrastructure development, covering the construction
of irrigation, dyke, sewage and pumping station networks, for the
fisheries sector.
   An additional 11 fishing ports will be built in the provinces
of Ca Mau, Kien Giang, Bac Lieu, Tien Giang, Ben Tre and Tra Vinh.
The biggest port, located in Ben Tre province, is capable of
accommodating fishing vessels up to 200,000 tons in weight.
   Vietnam's southernmost province of Ca Mau is the delta's
leading aquatic producer. It is striving to catch 225,000 tons of
aquatic products, including 80,000 tons of shrimps, this year (a
year-on-year increase of 13,500 tons).
   There are 77 aquatic product processing establishments with a
combined capacity of 250,000 tons/year operating in the delta.
   The government of the country has approved a plan to build four
new processing establishments with a combined capacity of 60,000
tons/year in An Giang and Tra Vinh provinces, and to upgrade seven
others in Vinh Long, Bac Lieu and Can Tho provinces.
   There are also 14 large-scale projects to expand 10
refrigeration factories and construct four factories specializing
in fishing equipment as well as fish and shrimp feed in An Giang,
Soc Trang, Kien Giang, Ca Mau, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, Tien Giang and
Bac Lieu provinces.
   The region earned almost 2.5 billion dollars from aquatic
product exports in the 1996-2000 period. The figure made up 52
percent of the country's total aquatic product value.  Enditem

by Hou Hexiang