Many legal gaps and lack of incentive mechanisms "discourage" investors in tourism real estate.

ANTD.VN - At the workshop "Amending the Land Law: Creating land for tourism" organized by Investment Newspaper on October 19, many experts pointed out the fact that the draft Law still lacks regulations to encourage the development of tourism real estate infrastructure, especially in the issue of land access.

Many legal gaps

According to statistics from the Vietnam Real Estate Association (VnREA), there are currently about 239 resort real estate projects nationwide. Of which, the estimated value of condotel projects is about VND297,128 billion; villa projects are estimated at VND243,990 billion and shophouse projects are about VND154,245 billion. The total value of these three products is about VND681,886 billion, equivalent to USD30 billion.

However, after a period of rapid development, in recent years, this segment has slowed down. The market is almost frozen, with insignificant transaction volume.

The main reason for the sharp decline of this market, in addition to the impact of Covid-19, is the lack of a comprehensive development strategy for the tourism industry, especially the completion of mechanisms and legal frameworks for the effective exploitation of land resources as well as infrastructure for tourism development in Vietnam, which is a huge challenge.

According to a survey by the Vietnam Real Estate Research Institute, among the factors hindering the speed, scale and determination to participate in the Vietnamese tourism and resort real estate market, economic and financial factors account for 30%, legal factors account for 50% and other factors account for 20%.

The above data shows that legal gaps in the field of tourism and resort real estate business have been causing concerns for investors about legal safety or possible risks.

Conference Scene

Economist, Dr. Can Van Luc pointed out some shortcomings such as: Incentive policies for the tourism industry have not been clearly specified in a number of related laws and regulations (Investment Law 2020, Law on Investment under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) method 2020...).

The legal framework for land allocation for tourism development projects still has many shortcomings such as: Tourism businesses are currently not allocated land or leased land through bidding for land use rights (according to Decree No. 25/2020/ND-CP dated February 28, 2020 of the Government).

The current draft Land Law (amended) stipulates 30 cases of land recovery for socio-economic development in the national interest, but there are no projects for tourism, recreation and entertainment development.

In addition, regulations on granting and transferring ownership of land and assets attached to commercial and tourism land (condotels, shophouses, etc.) are still incomplete and inconsistent. The draft revised Land Law does not provide detailed regulations on granting certificates for commercial and service land, including tourism land and types of tourism real estate formed on tourism land.

More than 100 tourism projects are "shelved" waiting to be resolved.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh, Chairman of the Vietnam Real Estate Brokers Association, said that Vietnam currently has more than 200 tourism real estate projects being implemented, creating nearly 100,000 condotels, 3,000 villas, and 15,000 new hotel rooms.

To achieve the goal of becoming a tourism powerhouse by 2030, with 160 million domestic visitors and 50-70 million international visitors, the accommodation infrastructure must have about 500,000 rooms. Thus, we have only achieved 1/3 of the infrastructure system and the quality is not high.

Therefore, Mr. Dinh believes that it is necessary to create conditions for tourism real estate developers. “The Land Law does not mention the names of tourism real estate developers, this group of subjects is absent from the Land Law, Investment Law and other regulations. If we cannot promote this group of subjects, when will we be able to achieve the goal…” – Mr. Dinh raised the issue.

According to Mr. Dinh, there are currently more than 100 large-scale tourism projects that are “shelved” waiting for legal solutions. “If this situation continues, it will not encourage tourism investment, discourage investors, and even local authorities who want to promote investment will face difficulties,” he said.

Regarding the issue of land acquisition, Master Nguyen Van Dinh - Real estate legal expert said that if land acquisition for tourism projects is not allowed as in the draft revised Land Law, investors will have to negotiate with the people.

“If so, we have left out a group of foreign investors – while this is a big “eagle”, because this group is not included in the agreement. We have eliminated them from the game, while we expect to have large tourist areas and theme parks” – Mr. Dinh said.

In addition, Mr. Dinh also proposed a mechanism for land use exemption for commercial service land users. “We compare it with industrial park real estate projects, where businesses can be exempted from land rent for a number of years. This thinking can be applied to tourism real estate, because these are also projects that have the potential to spread and contribute greatly to the socio-economy,” the expert suggested.

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