Pham Quang Tu from the Vietnam Union of Vietnam Science and Technology (Vusta) has warned about the depletion of many types of minerals in the talks with a local press. He said that the “achievement disease” has made Vietnamese natural resources more and more exhausted.

Both state management agencies and enterprises all strive to export as many as possible, while the export turnover is considered the “ruler” which “measures” the achievements of companies and localities. Besides, it is obvious that raw mineral exports bring benefits to some individuals and agencies.

However, Tu emphasised that it is necessary to tell the difference between raw mineral exports and the exports of refined products. Vietnam encourages boosting the export of processed products with high added values, not raw materials with low processing content ratio.

Exploiting and exporting raw minerals do not bring economic effects. This work should be done only in the very early stage of economic development, when difficulties still exist, in order to create the driving force for the development.

Tu has called on to change the current mechanism, or the export of raw materials, though bringing some money. would make the country become poorer. The money collected from the export of raw minerals is not big enough to cover the expenses Vietnam will have to spend to fix the long term problems in the environment and society.

Only the enterprises that export raw materials for short term profits, and the individuals who approve the export deals, can pocket money. Meanwhile, both the state and the society have to bear long term consequences.

Vietnam now has to reduce coal exports after it has realised that it does not have enough coal to run thermopower plants and to serve the country’s industrialization, and that the illegal exports of millions of tons of coal across the border gates every year have caused the loss of trillions of dong to the state budget.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, by the end of September 2011, Vietnam had exported USD8.38 billion worth of fuel and minerals, accounting for 12 percent of the total export turnover, an increase of 45 percent over the same period of the last year.

Scientists all have warned that the “mineral bleeding” has become very serious, which has much affected the health of the national economy. They have called on to take interministerial actions to tighten the export of minerals, especially the minerals that the world and China are hunting for, including coal, titanium and iron.

In 2010, at a conference held in Binh Dinh province, representatives of Chinese companies said that they were ready to buy all the raw titanium exploited in Binh Dinh.

This partially explains why the titanium exploitation in Binh Dinh in particular and in the coastal provinces of the central region has become so chaotic in recent years.

On December 23, 2011, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee released a resolution on the establishment of a supervision team which is charge of supervising the implementation of the laws on mineral exploitation and the environment protection.

The supervision activities would be carried out for nine months, by both the central levels and the 13 provinces, where there are the biggest mineral exploitation activities.