KON TUM (VNS) — President Truong Tan Sang yesterday urged Kon Tum Province to boost the industrialisation of agriculture and improve planning for agricultural production.
He asked the province to recalculate in order to work out measures to ensure social welfare, develop the economy, and protect the environment.
In addition to protecting specialised forests, the province should reserve land to develop long-term cash crops and short-term agricultural plants, he added.
He said forest planning required close co-operation between the and the localities concerned and asked agencies to devise policies for forest development.
Ineffective forest managers should be replaced and plantations allocated to more capable agencies to ensure higher economic efficiency.
The President asked Kon Tum to ensure political security and social order by improving socio-economic development and consolidating the . The province was also urged to increase international co-operation to build a border of peace, friendship, co-operation, stability, and development.
President Sang also visited Sa Loong Commune and Kon Plong District where he presented cows to 50 poor families. He also conducted a fact-finding tour of Bo Y international Border Economic Zone between Viet Nam, , visited Kon Tum's police force, and attended the ground-breaking ceremony of the for Ngoc Linh Ginseng Research and Development in Dac To District.
Sharing a border with Laos and Cambodia, the province should pay attention to its foreign relations in order to maintain peace in the region, the president said.
Kon Tum has 13 border communes and is home to 30 ethnic minority groups. In the first half of 2014, the province's GDP increased by 11.6 percent and annual per capita income exceeded VND25 million (US$1,200).
After three years of implementing the new-style rural area building programme, the province has built roads to all the communes, has connected 96 percent of its villages to the national power grid, and has built primary schools and healthcare stations in 81 out of 86 communes.
