The Ministry of Industry and Trade has bowed to strong public criticisms, saying it will redo the controversial draft plan for steel industry development until 2025 with a vision towards 2035.
The ministry will hire international consultants to re-draft the plan as the first two drafts have attracted criticisms.
Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh has told the Heavy Industry Department to hire foreign consulting firms to start all over again, saying the first two drafts, which were done with local experts’ help, have proven to be infeasible.
Foreign consultants should identify steel industry development trends regionally and globally, evaluate the competitiveness of Vietnam’s steel sector, select technologies and assess environmental impacts, according to a document signed by the minister.
The new draft should be made ready in the second quarter next year.
Hiring an independent foreign consulting firm will guarantee objectivity, especially in the wake of the serious marine life pollution caused by the Formosa steel project’s dumping industrial toxic waste in the sea on the central coast.
He said future projects in the steel industry would be strictly assessed and that the public and mass organizations should play a role by keeping a close watch on them.
A sticking point in the first draft of the steel industry development plan was Ca Na steel mill project in the central coast province of Ninh Thuan proposed by Hoa Sen Group, a local steel trading and processing firm.
When this first draft was publicized, environmentalists criticized the inclusion of Ca Na steel project in the plan, saying it would become another version of Formosa in the future.
In the second draft, the ministry insisted on keeping the Ca Na steel project in the plan but the plan made no mention of Hoa Sen Group’s name. Still, experts blasted the plan, proposing Ca Na steel project be scrapped to protect the marine environment on the central coast.