Only four projects operational

To date, the island development programming remains controversial. A lot of projects have been registered, but investors have made no moves. Many big infrastructure items on the island are unfinished. The Duong To International airport project, which kicked off construction in 2008, still has not finished main items, including a resettlement area.

According to the Phu Quoc Island Investment and Development Management Board, 33 investment projects have been licenced by Kien Giang People’s Committee. The projects are expected to cover an area of 1,157 hectares with the total capital of 31 trillion dong. 174 other projects have gotten agreement in principle, expected to cover an area of 7,855 hectares.

On October 5, 2004, the then Prime Minister Phan Van Khai signed a decision approving the master plan on developing Phu Quoc Island in Kien Giang province with outlook until 2020.

The master plan said that Phu Quoc will be developed into a big and modern international tourism and trade exchange centre in Cuu Long River Delta, which will be gradually turned into a large regional and global tourism and trade centre.

By 2010, there will be several high-quality tourism and entertainment complexes, attracting 300-350,000 travellers a year. It is expected that by 2020, it will receive 2-3 million travelers. However, only four of the licenced projects have become operational, namely Berjaya Long Beach, Veranda, Cataco and Miramar resorts.

Eighty-eight projects of the said 174 projects which have got agreement in principle have not followed stipulated investment procedures for many reasons.

The projects registered by big names including Swiss Tructsse in cooperation with Vietnam’s Vinaconex (the Euro2 billion project on finance and tourism centre), the US-based Rockingham Group (the $1 billion high-grade tourism and entertainment complex), Starbay Veitnam ($1.8 billion Starbay resort complex) have not moved farther than asking for land.

Earning money from project trading

Hearing about the great potentials of Phu Quoc Island, a lot of people have rushed to lobby to get the right for investment in projects and rushed to commit fraud, totalling several billion dong.

Trinh Van Trung, former Head of the Economics Division under the Kien Giang People’s Committee, was arrested after reportedly receiving 500 million dong from Xa Huong Company and promising to allocate forest land to the company for a tourism project.

In early 2008, a Viet Kieu in France, Luc, met Ngoc, a land broker, and the two sides negotiated about Luc’s purchase of 11.3 hectares of land from Ngoc. In fact, the 11.3 hectares of land was national forest land, not Ngoc’s.

Ngoc promised to help Luc with the procedures in the project’s investment, but then ran off with 1.2 billion dong worth of Luc’s money.

A lot of government officials have been selling state-owned land and forest land as their own. The police are now investigating a case in Ham Ninh commune, in which local authorities are accused of selling state land to officials. No one questions the potential of Phu Quoc Island, but even a paradise can’t be built in a day.