Yahoo News 28 Jul 08;
Communist Vietnam plans to restrict the growth of new golf courses encroaching on rice farms to ensure national food security and protect thousands of poor farmers, state media reported Monday.
More than 140 golf courses, either operating or in the planning stages, would take up almost 50,000 hectares (more than 120,000 acres) of land, said the Vietnam News daily quoting a Ministry of Planning and Investment report.
New golf courses had been licensed at a rate of more than one per week since early 2006, when foreign investor interest surged in the "emerging tiger" economy, which saw growth of 8.5 percent last year.
But now, as food prices are sky-rocketing amid double-digit inflation, the government is planning to freeze new courses that do not meet land-use criteria and environmental protection requirements, reports said.
"Local governments should cease issuing new golf licenses if the projects are built on land which is currently used to cultivate two rice crops a year," the ministry report said according to the Vietnam Investment Review.
Vietnam currently has only 13 operating golf course projects, but new licenses have mushroomed recently, especially near the northern capital Hanoi and around the southern business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, the report found.
Long An province, near the former Saigon, had issued 18 licenses, and state-owned companies had also asked for permission to build many courses, with shipbuilder Vinashin alone planning five golf projects, it said.
Thousands of farmers had already lost their land and livelihoods, and developers had typically compensated them at a rate of about two or three dollars per square metre of land, the report said.
Golf courses also take a heavy environmental toll, said Eng Le Anh Tuan from the Can Tho University Environmental Technology Centre.
An 18-hole golf courses consumes 5,000 cubic metres of water per day, enough for 20,000 households, and three times the pesticides, fertilisers and other chemicals used for farming, he was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News.
Amid Vietnam's economic boom, rice land shrank from 4.5 million to 4.1 million hectares between 2000 and 2006 due to the growth of industrial and residential areas, the Agriculture Ministry said in June.
World grain prices have shot up this year, leading to bouts of panic-buying of rice in Vietnam and prompting the government to cap international sales and impose export tariffs to ensure national food security.
