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The Fate of the $4.3 Billion Mega-Project on the Shores of Dak Lak, 17 Years After Getting the Green Light

4 August, 2025

Continuous Downward Investment Adjustments

The Government Inspectorate has just announced its plan to inspect projects and works that are facing difficulties, obstacles, delays, stagnation, low efficiency, and potential for loss and waste in multiple localities across the country.

Included in this list is the super project, New City Vietnam, a high-class tourism complex located in the province of Dak Lak (formerly Phu Yen province).

According to a report previously published by the Phu Yen (former) Department of Planning and Investment, the New City Vietnam high-class tourism complex project is one of the largest and most important foreign-invested projects in the province. Phu Yen expected that the project would effectively exploit and promote its beach tourism resources, contributing to the socio-economic development of the locality.

The project was introduced with a total investment of 4.3 billion USD. Photo: C.H

Based on the approval of the Prime Minister, on July 8, 2008, the People’s Committee of Phu Yen province issued an investment registration certificate for the first time to New City Vietnam Co., Ltd. (100% foreign-owned) to implement the Phu Yen high-class tourism complex project with an area of 565 hectares and a total investment of 4.3 billion USD. This was one of the largest investment projects at that time.

However, after being granted the investment registration certificate, the project progressed slowly. After 6 years, by 2014, due to financial difficulties, the investor requested an adjustment to the Investment Registration Certificate and was granted an amended certificate by the Provincial People’s Committee.

At this time, the project scale was adjusted from 565 hectares to 357.52 hectares, and the total investment was reduced from 4.3 billion USD to 1 billion USD.

In the following years, the investor continued to propose adjustments to the project scale, reducing the area from 357.52 hectares to 139.52 hectares and the total investment from 1 billion USD (equivalent to 21,000 billion VND at that time) to approximately 7,990 billion VND. Of this total investment, the owner’s equity was about 1,199 billion VND (accounting for 15% of the total investment according to Clause 14, Decree 43/2014).

However, in the application dossier, the investor still did not contribute sufficient owner’s equity as prescribed. According to the financial report, the owner’s equity of the investor was only about 72 billion VND, and the charter capital was about 125 billion VND. Therefore, according to regulations, the province could not lease land to the investor to implement the project.

In addition, the project implementation progress and the proposed duration of the project were also inconsistent with regulations. Therefore, the application for adjustment of the Investment Registration Certificate was not eligible to be submitted to the Provincial People’s Committee for consideration and approval.

Up to now, after 17 years, the project has not been implemented, and the land is deserted. Photo: C.H

Lack of Consensus on Resolution

Also, according to the Phu Yen Department of Planning and Investment, in addition to the above financial capacity issues, the Government Inspectorate once concluded that in addition to the forest area allowed for exploitation, the project did not fully comply with the procedures prescribed by regulations. The investor also violated regulations by exploiting 2.7 hectares of forest land without a land retrieval and handover decision, without an exploitation license, and without a decision on forest purpose conversion.

To support, resolve difficulties, and guide the investor to overcome these violations, the Department of Planning and Investment, together with the functional agencies of Phu Yen province, organized a meeting on October 6, 2023, inviting the investor to dialogue and present the difficulties and obstacles in the process of implementing the project. However, the two sides still had many issues that were not agreed upon.

At that time, the Department of Planning and Investment informed that the province was assigning the functional agencies to review the entire project to synthesize difficulties and obstacles related to land, investment, and forestry (such as land leasing, land use purpose conversion, and forest use purpose conversion) and report to the central agencies for consideration and final settlement.

In an inspection conclusion on the responsibilities of the People’s Committee of Phu Yen province, published in October 2024, the Government Inspectorate also mentioned New City as one of the projects that were approved in principle for investment or had been allocated land or leased land but were slow to implement or did not implement.

The Government Inspectorate also made it clear that this was one of the projects for which the province had delayed implementing the directions of the Prime Minister. The Inspectorate requested the province to resolutely handle the shortcomings and violations of many projects in Phu Yen, including this project.

Tran Chung

– 05:30 29/07/2025