Vietnam to inspect golf projects

All golf course projects nationwide will be inspected next month as the number of projects exceeds a national golf course zoning plan, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said.

Under the zoning plan approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, in addition to 19 golf courses already in use, 70 others will be built.

However, between July 1, 2006 and June 4, 2008, the administration of provinces and cities greenlighted 128 golf projects, the ministry said in a report to the National Assembly (NA), Vietnam’s legislative body, on June 7.

The results of the inspection will be reported to the NA at its next one-month long session starting at the end of this year, the ministry said.

The ministry also said it would coordinate with other relevant ministries and agencies to regulate the kinds of land that could be used for building golf courses.

It suggested that a golf course could use a maximum of five hectares of rice fields which produce only one harvest a year, but its investor must compensate by giving the government a sum of money that is enough to convert five hectares of unusable land into farmland.

Source: ThanhnienNews