VINACHEM

Chinese enterprises send their workers to Vietnam to explore mineral mines. Theybring capital, equipment and technologies to Vietnam. The only thing Vietnameseneed to do when signing contracts with them, is to exploit minerals with theirmachines and sell to them.

In order to compete with domestic buyers, Chinese businessmen would be ready topay much higher for the minerals. Hundreds of Vietnamese enterprises, encouragedby the high pay, have been exploiting minerals from Vietnam to sell to China.

Colonel Hoang Van Truc, Deputy Head of the Economics Police Department, saidthat there are too many loopholes which can be exploited by enterprises toexport minerals to China to seek profit.

It happens that mine owners have been exploiting more than they are allowed toexploit, keep the excessive mineral output out of books and then exporting theminerals illegally to China.

Local people have been stealing minerals from the mines to sell to the big gangswhich then resell to Chinese. Coal has been collected in the open air in DongTrieu (Quang Ninh province) and Phu Cat (Binh Dinh).

Truc said that the situation has become so serious that local authorities failto control the export, thus causing the loss of the natural resources andserious environment pollution.

Also according to Truc, the domestic seaways in the northern provinces andnortheastern sea have become more bustling with the ships carrying smuggledcoal.

The coal, illegally exploited by individuals, and the coal legally exploited byenterprises but later slipped out of the enterprises’ stores, all are carried tothe private run ports before they are carried away to China.

Enterprises have been licensed to exploit coal to provide to cement, electricityand fertilizer plants. However, big amounts of exploited coal have not gone tothe right addresses, because they have left Vietnam for China.

Not only coal, but manganese, lead, zinc and other kinds of ores have also beensold to China. The ores are carried on trucks or trains to some locations inVietnam under the domestic trade deals, but then they would be carried away toChina across the border, when there are favorable conditions.

There are three biggest sources of minerals supply to China.

A lot of enterprises got the licenses from the Ministry of Natural Resources andthe Environment or local authorities to exploit minerals. However, they do notintend to set up factories to process ores. They would rather sell crude oil toChina to earn big money, than making heavy investment in building plants.

The second one is the enterprises which buy minerals from licensed enterprisesfor illegally exporting to China. The enterprises’ leaders have close directrelations with Chinese bosses.

The third one is the transport enterprises which carry smuggled ores to Chinathemselves.

Le The Chien from the Government Inspection Agency has found a lot of problemsin the localities’ licensing mechanism. In many localities, 50 percent of thelicenses did not get the approval from the Prime Minister. Local authoritieslicensed many processing factories which are not listed in the developmentstrategy.

Geology experts have warned that if the current problems cannot be settled,Vietnam would see the mineral exhaust in 40-60 years. Meanwhile, China, theeconomy with hot development, has been lusting for Vietnam’s minerals and tryingevery possible means to obtain the minerals.