Golf courses fight for land in Vietnam

Scotsman:

THE Ho Chi Minh Trail once provided a vital supplies link for communist troops battling against the massed forces of South Vietnam and the United States.

So, given the historical associations, perhaps it wasn't the wisest decision by the marketing men to appropriate the name for Vietnam's latest capitalist venture, the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail.

Promoters created the concept to sell a series of eight courses, whose label is as good a sign as any of where Vietnam seems to be headed – its heroic wartime past redefined as a sales pitch.

But farmers and agriculturalists, embattled by a land grab that has seen their precious resources shrink in the face of industrialisation, feel this latest venture is a bridge too far.

Until last year, licences for new courses were being issued at an average of one a week, for a total of more than 140 projects around the country. If all these were completed, the number of courses would approach that of golf-mad South Korea, where there are close to 200. It would still fall well short of China, which has in excess of 300, and nowhere near the number of Scottish courses, which totals more than 560.

But for a country that had only two courses at the end of the war in 1975 and, according to some estimates, has only 5,000 golfers today, the increase in projects over the past four years has been explosive.

The backlash, however, has been equally dramatic, fuelled by social and environmental interests.

In summer 2008, prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered a halt to new course construction pending a review, and in June, the government ordered the cancellation of 50 of the projects. But most of the others are well under way, to add to the country's 13 established golf courses.

"Developers and foreign investors are saying they want to make the country a tourist destination, and to do that you need to offer more amenities like golf," said Kurt Greve, the American general manager of the Ocean Dunes Golf Club and the Dalat Palace Golf Club.

In the drive to industrialise, Vietnam has already turned over vast tracts of farmland to factories and other developments. According to the agriculture ministry, land devoted to rice, the national staple and a leading source of export revenue, shrank by one million acres to 10.1 million acres between 2000 and 2006

But many of these new golf projects seem to have more to do with capitalism than with sport. Taxes on golf courses are lower than those on other forms of development, so many of the projects appear to be disguised tourism and housing ventures.

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We need to start with the fact that the Ho Che Minh Trail is in Laos and not in Vietnam.

I think these projects could create a significant number of jobs for those who would maintain the courses and serve as caddies and in the bars and restaurants.

I was in Northern I Corps and did not see many locations inland where I would envision a golf course, but there was some beautiful beach front property between the Ben Hai and Cua Viet rivers.

I am not a golfer, but I do appreciate a well manicured course.