With the care and instruction of the Government, Govermental Ministries and the Quang Ninh People’s Committee; the army, people in Mong Cai Town are determined to maintain the revolutionary attitude and unity to overcome difficulties in implementing the State and Governmental policies, as a result Mong Cai has gained remarkable achievements in term of socio-economic development and the national  defense. These achievements resulted from the clever leadership of the authority and related bodies in Mong Cai Town. In the coming time, the care of authority and related bodies and the effective exploitation of potentials continue to play a prominent role in raising Mong Cai to a new height not only in the whole country but also in the region.

1. The potential of mechanism, policy, and the development orientation of the international community, Asia region  and Vietnam.

Integrating into regional and international economic brings both opportunities and challenges. However, thanks to the right development orientation and good opportunities, people in Mong Cai are successful in overcoming difficulties and effectively exploit mechanism of Vietnam, China and other nations in the region.

- In context of intergrating into the international and regional economy, Mong Cai has many favorable conditions to develop, especially the trade sector. Based on the fact that, since Vietnam implemented the open door policy, created a market economic oriented socialist, joined Asean and signed the agreements on trade, finance with other nations within the region or the international community, Vietnam has gained a high economic growth rate. The sustainable political institution, security ensuring, and the preferential policies will attract the investment, especially the special economic zones and the border gate economic sector.

- Joining AFTA, the Asian- Pacific free trade area and pre-WTO generated opputinities to attract investment and develop the trade activities. At that time, Mong Cai will be a gateway of Asia region with China market and North- East of Asia. In addition, many production industries will have access to the international market, especially the garment, raising and processing aquaculture and so on.

- A long with the economic structure shifting, it is important to take the comprehensive investment, in-depth strategy about the infrastructure to the human resources to meet the need of integration process.

- Mong Cai gained the momentum for the sustainable socio-economic development as an advantage of the preferential policies by the Central and Local authority (under the Decision No. 675/TTg, Decision No. 53/TTg, and Decision No. 273/2005/QD-TTg).

2. The  potentials  and advantages of trade:

A long with the potential due to the right development orientation, policy mechanism of Government and the Quang Ninh Province, Mong Cai also takes advantages of its natural resources:

- Mong Cai, one of the areas bordering to China- the potential and large market after joining WTO, is a border economic zone. In recent years, Mong Cai has become the threshold of exchanging goods between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia market.

- Mong Cai has an efficent landway and waterway, an international and sub-branch border gate, regional and local level ports and domestic ports to serve the trade service. Besides the preferential policies, the town also built many large - scale construction projects to meet the demand of the border gate trade activities. As for now, many domestic and foreign investors have invested in Mong Cai with the total capital of trillions VND.

- In the past years, the comprehensive investment for the domestic market infrastructure has created a great attraction to the domestic and foreign investors, esspecially the Chinese investors.

- The infrastructure for trade activities still receives the comprehensive investment( Ka Long chemical checking house and car parking house), and the implementation of building the tariff area, upgrading Van Gia seaport, Dan Tien port and Bac Luan bridge II are the momentums to attract enterprises to participate in the import and export activities.

- The trade activities help develop the service sector and vice versa. Because of mastering the market orientation development, Mong Cai has continued receiving the invesment and encouragement to develop the industrial zones, industrial complex, services( Loading goods, ware-houses, ports..) to assist the trade import- export activities.

3. Tourism potential:

Mong Cai has many famous beauty spots and historical sites, the traditional customs. These are the favourable factors for the tourism and service sectors to develop. Specifically:

- Mong Cai town has the Tra co- Binh Ngoc resort. It is suitable for the tourism development in terms of a long - smooth sandcoast, and with the fresh environment and the diversified ecological system. Moreover, Tra co-as one of the most beautiful bathing beaches in the whole country, Vinh Trung, Vinh Thuc islands with great potential, large area of mangrove and up stream forest, many beautiful lakes like Tra Vinh, Quat Dong.. are suitable to develop the ecological tourism.

- Thanks to the international border gate economic, many economic sectors have invested to build many international level entertainment centers in this area in the recent years. Mong Cai is next to many beautiful landscapes in Dong Hung town and Phong Thanh port city in China, as a result it’s considered a key factor to boost up the development of tourism sector, especially the international travel in Mong Cai. Annually, more than 1 million tourists turns visit Mong Cai( of which the Chinese people -accouting for 70-80%), which shows the great potential for the tourism service in Mong Cai.

- Mong Cai has many big, modern trade centers. With the diversification of goods, they are the key factors to attract the tourists for both enjoying the trip and doing shipping in Mong Cai.

- With many national ranked historical sites and the traditional festivals are suitable to enhance the form of cultural travelling.

4. The potential and favorable conditions  in the production of agriculture, forestry and fishery:

The soil, climate, topography potentials make Mong Cai become an area of fertile soil- home to the fruit trees and industrial crops….

a.                       The agri-forestry production.

 Mong Cai has the potentials about the soil, climate. In addition, with the under crop land of 7000 hectares, the number of more than 13.000 households based on the agriculture production equally to nearly 60.000 people accouting for 75% of the whole population, local people are successful to reach the annual cultivated area of  more than 6.000 hectares. With the area of over 520 km2, the population of over 80.000, and the population density of 154 Person/km2, as a result the agriculture production potential is still very high.The topography in the North are mountains, midlands and in the East in Mong Cai town are plain- delta areas sloped gently to the sea, further more it also has the lake net with the large area of water supply. The natural disasters do not frequently happen in Mong Cai, therefore the climate here is very mild. As a result, these factors are vital to develop the V.A.C model. With the climate and soil potentials, people in Mong Cai can get rid of poverty and improve living standard by planting the high yield trees.

- Forestry sector: Because Mong Cai is a border town, so it receives much financial aid donated by the non-governments organization (NGO)( 661 project, Viet- Germany Project, JAICA mangrove forest planting…). In the recent years, thanks to those aids, Mong cai has planted thounsand hectares of up stream and mangrove forest, contributing to the environment protection process and creating many beauty spots for serving the tourism development. Besides, the effective implementation of allocation of land and forestry policies helps develop the V.A.C model.

b.           Aquaculture raising:

- This sector receives a lot of comprehensive investment to turn into the spearhead economic factor in the town. Having 6 wards and communes adjoining to the sea and the estuaries, Mong Cai is very suitable raise the high value aquaculture products due to the large area of water. Mong Cai has Ka Long and Bac Luan river nets flowing into the sea in two different river mouths, in addition regulating the fresh water and salt water created the large area of brackish water. These are the favorable conditions for raising the brackish aquaculture fish without building the regulated fresh water lakes like other different provinces, so people will take advantage of cutting the production cost.

- The large area of perennial mangrove and the extra planted area of mangrove, and a diversified ecosystems are suitable to raise the high value aquaculture products: shrimp, crab, garrupa…Many places are also suitable to raise the high value bred fish, but they have not fully exploit its potentials yet (Vinh Trung and Vinh Thuc islands).

- Raising the aquaculture products is favorable due to the fresh water and the non-polluted environment.

- The demand for aquaculture products remains very high in both domestic and international markets, especially in the process of intergrating into the global market, so it is considered as a good opportunity to develop the fishery sector in Mong Cai town.

- Offshore fish catching is favorable to develop due to the sea potentials.

In the faced of the potential of the fishery industry, the demand of the domestic and export market, thus over the past few years, raising the aquaculture products has developed in both size and type of breeding fish to meet the demand of domestic and international market. People in Mong Cai town tend to enjoy the extensive farming and industrial breeding methods. Although they require the systematical technology application, they produce the high yield products. However, the exploitation does not compensate for the potentials due to the lack of people’s technology application, so in the coming years, we need to work out some solutions to science and technology to help local people in the field of raising aquaculture products.