vietnam pushes investment...

A current article on governmental risk

http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7509521&action=article

Vietnam pushes investment, but road long in restive region

By John Ruwitch

BUON MA THUOT, Vietnam, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Senior Vietnamese officials on Saturday sought to portray a remote region of the country that has grappled with at times violent anti-government protests as an attractive investment destination.

Hundreds of officials, bankers and businessmen gathered in the hill town of Buon Ma Thuot for the Central Highlands's first ever investment forum, an event that Deputy Prime Minster Truong Vinh Trong said was "like rain in the dry season" for the region.

In 2001 and 2004, ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands staged mass demonstrations fuelled by land rights disputes and restrictions on religious freedom.
In their wake, the government introduced a raft of policies to stabilise the region, which is home to about 6 percent of Vietnam's population of 86 million, accounts for 16.5 percent of its land and almost all of its coffee output.
Security was tightened, scores of protesters were arrested and access to the area by foreigners was restricted. Provincial leaders were reshuffled and more officials with security backgrounds were rotated in.

Reports still emerged of sporadic protests, mostly focused on land rights problems, but on Saturday top officials said the region's security woes were history.
"In the Central Highlands, and in all of Vietnam, political stability and security in society have been maintained. There is no disorder or lack of security," Le Hong Anh, Public Security Minister and a member of the Communist Party's 15-man Politburo, told reporters.
Mai Van Nam, Vice Chairman of the Central Highlands Steering Committee, which Anh heads, said: "The state and the party have dealt with that problem."

Last week, President Nguyen Minh Triet gave amnesty to more than 5,000 convicts on Vietnam's 64th National Day, Sept. 2. Among them were 13 guilty of crimes relating to national security, 11 of whom were ethnic minorities involved in protests in the Central Highlands.
Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the University of New South Wales Australian Defence Force Academy, said that was a sign of confidence that the situation was under control.

ECONOMIC BETTERMENT


Along side the security crackdown, another key pillar of Hanoi's policy has been to allay gripes by trying to raise living standards in the Central Highlands, analysts say.
"It's what they've always done: divide who the bad guys are amongst the ethnic minorities, repress a small group, and try to win over the rest through development", Thayer said.
The central government has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

Some recent statistics are positive. Anh said per capita income in the five provinces that make up the Central Highlands was 12 million dong ($673), or nearly 4 times what it was in 2001. GDP growth was nearly double the national average, and between 2001 and 2008 was over 10 percent.

The region remains one of the poorest in Vietnam, though, and researchers say ethnic minority groups here are still severely disadvantaged when it comes to job opportunities, access to education and government services.
"The sense is that the ethnic minorities are not really part of the economic development there," said one analyst who declined to be named.

Investment has been slow to come and most of the big projects under way are run by state-owned companies.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest projects in the Central Highlands involving foreign partners -- a bauxite mining and smelting scheme involving a subsidiary of China's state aluminium firm Chinalco -- has provoked a widespread popular backlash.

"As for the economic situation in the Central Highlands there are setbacks, certainly a lot of them," Deputy Prime Minister Trong told the forum, reading off a list of challenges.
"(But) the space for growth is still huge. Don't forget that."