Protecting property rights key to attracting private investment in agriculture

Protecting the property rights to artificial forests and cultivated aquatic animals is of the utmost importance to attracting private investment in aquaculture and forestry, a recent report on the Vietnamese economy has concluded.

The conclusion made by the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research (VEPR) has caught public attention at a time when the government is considering changes to the Law on Forest Protection and Development, and the Law on Fisheries.

However, the proposed amendments to the forest law lack clarity in forest ownership and transparency in the case of dividing and determining forest boundaries and forest inventory.

The Law on Fisheries is in a similar predicament when there remain fairly complicated regulations on business conditions and administrative procedures, according to the report.

It recommends that regulations on allocating, renting and retrieving water surfaces for aquaculture should be consistent with regulations of the Law on Land while the regulations for co-ownership of fishery resources should be fine-tuned.

Nguyen Minh Duc, a co-author of the VEPR’s report, states that from the view of investors, only when their property rights are protected firmly in the long term will they feel assured to invest in agriculture.

He said respecting the property rights of owners, including rights to dispose of the property when the owners withdraw from the market is one of many measures to help attract investment in agriculture.

In recent years, agriculture has received great attention from both the government and investors but the sector’s growth has been declining, with output expanding by only 1.2% in 2016.

Furthermore, the ratio of investment in agriculture to total investment also tends to decrease and land disputes are becoming more frequent and expanding in scale.

Meanwhile, agricultural production depends largely on natural resource inputs such as land, water, forests and fisheries, therefore regulations for managing such natural resources are crucial to attracting and encouraging investment in agriculture.