Kien Giang (VNA) – Following his tour of Phu Quoc city in Kien Giang province, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended a meeting with provincial and city leaders on March 30 afternoon, during which he asked the island city to soon solve the problem of rapid but unsustainable development, and address bottlenecks in infrastructure, water sources, and environmental sanitation.

Stressing that Phu Quoc has a strategic location, unique potential, outstanding opportunities, and competitive advantages in service and tourism development compared to many other localities, Chinh said the Party, National Assembly, Government, and Prime Minister have issued many resolutions, decisions, and plans to develop Phu Quoc quickly and sustainably, and turn it into a modern tourism centre, as well as a cultural, service, and logistics centre.

To that end, it is necessary to continue concretising policies and laws of the Party and State, and approved development plans in order to define an appropriate and effective roadmap, which closely follows, exploits and makes the most of distinctive potential, prominent opportunities, and competitive advantages, Chinh stated.

He asked Phu Quoc to mobilise and unleash all development resources, focus on developing infrastructure in the fields of transport, tourism, culture, education-training, health, digital transformation, the environment, and climate change response.

Attention must be paid to training and attracting high-quality human resources to meet development needs, building a modern health system to ensure health care for both locals and tourists, and well protecting the environment, forests and the marine ecology. 

The Government leader also emphasised the necessity for the island city to speed up administrative procedure reform, improve the business and investment climate, better the prevention and control of corruption and other negative phenomena, and completely solve land-related issues.

He expressed his belief that Phu Quoc tourism will develop in a green, sustainable direction, with its own identity, thus contributing to affirming Vietnam's tourism brand on the world map.

With an area of 593 sq.km, more than 40 islands, and a population of nearly 150,000 people, Phu Quoc has an important economic, defence and security position, and is an important transportation link of the region and the world.

Last year, it welcomed 2.84 million tourist arrivals, up 23.03% year-on-year./.