According to the Governor of State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Le Minh Hung, banks have pledged to lend VND120 trillion (roughly US$5.2 billion) and disbursed nearly VND33 trillion (about US$1.4 billion) to develop hi-tech agriculture. However, there are still some pitfalls related to mortgaging land-attached assets.
To be more specific, the property on the land whose rent is paid annually is not issued a certificate of ownership. Therefore, the mortgage is not accepted. Vietnamese Government has assigned the SBV and the Ministry of Justice to resolve this issue.
Meanwhile, some hi-tech agricultural enterprises rent land from farmers, who still own the certificates of land use rights of these plots. Thus, they cannot mortgage the rented plots.
In fact, hi-tech agricultural enterprises face innumerable land-related problems. Tran Le - Chairman of Tran Le Sakura Joint Stock Company – said, "Finding a land area large enough for farming is difficult, but developing our business is even more problematic. We have encountered huge bureaucratic obstacles when carrying out the organic farming projects in the regions."
Nguyen Quoc Hung – Director General of the Credit Department of the SBV – said that granting credit to hi-tech agriculture was a new direction, which meant there had been no precedents. Risks could incur while we carried out the projects that needed large investments.
Hung emphasized that hi-tech agricultural production facilities such as greenhouses, net houses,... had not been granted the certificates of ownership of assets on agricultural land. This had caused difficulties for enterprises to register the secured transactions and mortgage their assets for loans at banks.
Therefore, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment should quickly amend the regulations on granting the certificates of land use right, house and land-attached assets ownership to create favourable conditions for enterprises to register the secured transaction of bank loans.
