Golf courses will no longer be licensed on rice fields which have at least two crops a year, according to a governments draft on golf course development in Vietnam until 2020.
Only infertile rice-growing areas will now be considered for golf course development, Vietnam News Agency reported.
Areas of land for industrial zones, urban zones and forest land, especially protective forests and special-used forests, are also out of the question for golf course developers, according to a request made by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Provincial People’s Committees will be charged with the issuance and withdrawal of the investment licenses, according to the draft Decision by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI).
Also, State funding will no longer be used for courses, with the exception of public links.
Developers will have a deadline of four years after receiving license to implement their projects.
Luu Duc Hai, head of the Department of Urban Development under the Ministry of Construction, said each golf course project takes up a sizeable chunk of land from 80 to 700 hectares, most of which is farmland.
But some investors use land for other projects, and the land for the actual golf courses accounted for a small percentage of the total land licensed to the projects.
The remaining area is often used for the construction of commercial and tourism facilities such as shopping malls, trade centers, villas and hotels.
Land rentals for golf courses is generally much lower than those for other property projects such as villas, houses and trade centers, so investors exploited this loophole to recoup their investment more quickly.
The PM requested that the Decision must regulate that the combined area for housing construction must account for less than ten percent the total areas licensed to the projects.
A report by the MPI said Vietnam’s both operational and under construction golf courses cover 45,000 hectares of land – most of which had been used for crops.
Ironically, it is not a favored sport in Vietnam, with just 5,000 golfers, 200 of which are Vietnamese.
The rush to build golf courses started two years ago as Vietnam’s tourism czars were working to position the country as Asia’s next big golf destination.
It has forced farmers off their land to make way for ritzy new clubhouses, and raised concerns over scarce water resources and run-offs from pesticide use.
The planning and investment ministry has revoked 77 out of 166 licensed golf course projects so far this year as a response to the rampant licensing of golf courses in the country.
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