VIETNAM-CAMBODIA: On the Way to a Border Economic Zone

 

The vast, limitless ricefields between Vietnam’s An Giang province and Cambodia’s Takeo province were full of yellow paddy just three months ago in June. But by September 2006, water from the Mekong River had flooded almost the entire area, except for a narrow three-kilometre road that links the two provinces.

In the mid-section of the road lies the Tinh Bien International Border Gate, which is still bustling with people, vehicles and merchandise being transported back and forth between the two countries although it is already noon.

On the Cambodian side of the border gate of Takeo lies a plot of bare land stretching from the Thom Dung mountain to National Highway No 2 – and on the Vietnamese side, there is another piece of empty land by the Xuan To bridge on National Highway No 91.

It is here, on these two plots of land, that the border economic zone of Takeo and An Giang is taking shape. Along the road and the flooded rice fields, fishermen from the border zone are dipping their boats’ bow-net to catch ‘ca linh’, a type of anchovy that is plentiful in the lower Mekong region during the flood season.

Nguyen Hoang Vu, a motorbike taxi driver waiting at the Xuan To bridge, said “There isn't as much flooding this year as compared to last year, and the people driving motorbike taxis (who take up the job when there is no work at farms) outnumber those catching fish.”

Behind him, a big billboard stands out from the water and reads: ‘Vietnam Cambodia: Friendship and Cooperation for Mutual Development’ written in English and in Khmer. The opposite side of the board, facing Cambodia, has the same words, but in English and Vietnamese.

There are some 50 motorbike taxi drivers like Vu, most of them residents of Tinh Bien district. They gather on the plot of land that the government of An Giang province wants to develop as the Tinh Bien Border Gate Economic Zone, but none of them seem to know much about this zone.

Va explained. “We only care about transporting people to earn 80,000 Vietnamese dong (5 U.S. dollars) or so a day.” Their clientele consists of farmers from the two countries who cross the border to exchange farm produce, or Tinh Bien residents visiting the Cambodian district of Kirivong. All they need to show the border guards is an ID card issued to border residents. Visitors from outside the border districts must produce a passport with an entry visa.

On the day of my visit, some 100 people, including two Western tourists, crossed the border. There were also eight heavy trucks carrying steel, and building materials from Ho Chi Minh City to Cambodia, clearing formalities with immigration police and customs. In the opposite direction, going toward Ho Chi Minh City, big bags of scrap paper, beans, as well as bikes, were being carried on motorised carts.

In contrast, returning to Cambodia via Takeo at the foot of Thum Dung mountain the next day, I saw only heaps of paddy bags piled up on one side of National Highway No 2, which had recently been upgraded with Japanese aid, and which runs to Phnom Penh some 120 kilometres away. On the deserted road, I met some Cambodians standing by a broken-down cart that was carrying paddy. Cheerfully, they remarked in slightly accented Vietnamese: “This paddy is for sale in Vietnam. It brings more profits there.”

Pointing to two speedboats racing across the flooded rice fields near the market in Tinh Bien town, I asked them what those boats were carrying. “Sugar smuggled in all the way from Thailand,” came the reply.

We stopped in Chrey Thum casino, on Cambodian soil by National Highway No 21, about one kilometre from the Binh Di river, a small waterway that runs from Koh Thum district of Kandal province in Cambodia to An Phu district of An Giang province in Vietnam. The 70-km road, running from here to Phnom Penh, is the shortest route from the Cambodian capital to Vietnam. From the Binh Di ferry, one can take National Road No 956 to arrive at the Con Tien ferry 30 km away and Chau Doc township in An Giang, on the opposite side of the Hau River.

“The guests coming to this casino are mainly from Vietnam and Phnom Penh, and they come mostly on weekends and holidays,” Chan Yin, the manager of the Chrey Thum casino, told us. Chan speaks perfect Vietnamese and even has a Vietnamese name, Tri. He confided that he studied Vietnamese for three years in Ho Chi Minh City before he was hired by Kocan, the casino owner.

The Chrey Thum casino complex includes a 100-room hotel and a karaoke bar. Reminding us not to take a picture of the casino, Chren nimbly launched a ‘marketing’ campaign: “My boss, Mr Kocan, expects to do big business at the Khanh Binh-Chrey Thum Economic Zone. Another big boss from Malaysia is building another casino here and it will be bigger than this one!” Earlier, we happened to have passed by the plot of land in which the Malaysian-owned casino would be built -- by the Binh Di river.

At some distance from the casino and on an empty plot of land by the Chrey Thum bus terminal, Natra, who sells pork brought from An Giang, remarks that the land is owned by a Cambodian American.

Going back to Long Binh market on the other side of the Binh Di river, we came across  more than 100 stalls selling clothes, farm produce, food and drinking water -- all from Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. According to the customs sub-department of An Phu district, goods exported through this gate from Vietnam to Cambodia stood at more than 19 million million dollars in first six months of 2006. The goods were mostly fertiliser, enameled tiles, aluminum bars, household plastic wares, and building materials.

Despite all these signs of activity, there still remains uncertainty about the future of the Khan Binh-Chrey Thum border economic zone, which the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments agreed to open in 2005.

Pham Minh Tri, secretary of the An Phu district’s party committee, said: “It largely depends on the Binh Di bridge, whose location has yet to be chosen. The construction of the Con Tien bridge may be completed some time next year.” He then emphasised: “It’s regrettable that we’re always behind our neighbour (Cambodia) in the founding of the border economic zone. We have to wait for the central government to build the infrastructure, while our neighbours don’t have to. They have a strong and dynamic private sector, ready to invest in anything that can bring them profit.”