Decision No. 143/2007/QD-TTg of August 30, 2007, approving the scheme on building hue city into a festival city.

DECISION

APPROVING THE SCHEME ON BUILDING HUE CITY INTO A FESTIVAL CITY

THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the December 25, 2001 Law on Organization of the Government;
At the proposal of the Peoples Committee of Thua Thien Hue province (Official Letters No. 3184/TT-UB of December 9, 2004, and No. 2335/TTr-UB of June 30, 2006) and the Ministry- of Planning and Investment (Official Letter No. 3431/BKH-TD&GSDT of May 21, 2007) on the Scheme on building Hue city into a festival city,

DECIDES:

Article 1. To approve the Scheme on building Hue city into a festival city with the following principal contents:

1. Objectives:

a/ General objectives:

To build the Hue festival city into a national and international one imbued with Vietnamese identity: to build Hue city into a tourism city in harmony with the festival city. The Hue festival city will become a motive force for economic growth, greatly contributing to the socio-economic development of Thua Thien Hue province and Central Vietnam key economic region.

b/ Specific objectives:

- Regarding culture: To build a synchronous and effective system of cultural institutions; to conserve, develop and honor traditional cultures of Vietnam and Hue region; to introduce the Vietnamese culture to the world through cultural cooperation and exchange with other nations in the world; to accelerate the restoration, creation and development of traditional festive and cultural activities which represent and typify Vietnamese cultural characteristics and unique features of Hue region, inheriting and improving their contents and artistic quality towards modernity and advancement for cultural exchange with other countries in the region and the world.

- Regarding economic aspects: The Hue festival city will help boost economic development as well economic and labor restructuring in Hue city and Thua Thien Hue province along the line of quickly increasing the ratio of services and tourism. Culture, tourism and services will become the citys key economic sectors. Tourism and service industries and a system of urban infrastructure will be formed and developed in service of festivals and the sustainable development of Hue city.

- Regarding social affairs: The Hue festival city will have a healthy environment with assured security and social order and safety and free of social evils. A cultured lifestyle will be formed among citys dwellers, which is characterized by cultural diversity, politeness and national and international solidarity.

- Regarding urban infrastructure and material-technical foundations for festival and tourism activities: A synchronous, modern and national identity-bearing system of urban infrastructure, cultural landscape and space, and facilities in direct service of festival and tourism activities will be built.

- Regarding the development of human resources: To develop human resources of high professional qualifications in service of festival, tourist and service activities.

- Regarding festival management and organization: An effective festival management apparatus with highly qualified staff and a contingent of highly qualified professional cultural-artistic performers who will play the core role in festival activities will be built while attracting the wide, active and effective participation of all economic sectors and the people in building facilities for and organizing festival activities.

2. Tasks of building Hue festival city

a/ To build a festival cultural space in the city and surrounding areas with the following requirements: representing and converging traditional cultural-artistic values of Hue region; displaying and reflecting typical cultural values of different regions and nationalities in the country and the world; inheriting traditional cultural values and harmoniously combining forms of traditional folk culture with contemporary culture; undertaking cultural integration and exchange with other countries in the region and the world; and ensuring the harmonious combination of culture and landscape, the environment and ecosystem of Hue city and surrounding areas.

To consolidate, perfect and develop cultural festival spaces including Huong river cultural-ecological axis; urban culture-architecture routes; traditional culture-coastal ecology routes; the cultural space of the royal palace, ancient citadel and traditional cultures; the cultural space of revolutionary history; the space of community traditional folk festivals; the cultural space of natural ecology for community, physical training, sports, eco-tourism, recreation and entertainment activities.

b/ To conserve, exploit and promote intangible cultural resources of Hue region and Vietnam in service of festival activities, including studying, restoring, conserving and revitalizing traditional cultural royal values of educational and artistic significance; collecting, synthesizing, selecting, restoring, preserving, improving and promoting traditional and typical cultures and arts of Hue region; collecting, selecting, restoring, preserving, improving, and promoting traditional folk festivals of Hue region; and developing contemporary culture and arts.

c/ To conserve, restore, embellish and exploit tangible cultural resources to serve as a basis for the formation and organization of festival themes and activities, imbued with modern and typical characteristics of Vietnam and unique characteristics of Hue region.

d/ To build and develop cultural institutions of the festival city: concentrating on building and developing cultural facilities and the system of grassroots culture-information institutions, including the following principal components: speeding up the restoration, embellishment and reconstruction of works which are historical relic of Hue ancient capital and well organizing the protection and exploitation of relics; building and perfecting the system of museums; building and developing a system of grassroots cultural institutions; building professional art performance establishments; building a cinematographic center and renovating and upgrading cinemas; rallying scientists, lecturers and cultural activists in Thua Thien Hue province and Central Vietnam in order to establish a Hue-based research center for Vietnams royal culture and world cultural heritages; training and developing a contingent of cultural activists, cultural and art researchers, directors, art creators, art performers and artisans; developing various forms of community cultural activities; regularly organizing and improving the artistic value and quality of cultural activities and art performances in the locality; forming a new cultured lifestyle in residential quarters, offices, schools and enterprises.

dd/ To renovate, upgrade and build urban infrastructure facilities of the festival city, including: urban architecture, traffic system, wastewater and garbage treatment systems, urban lighting system, parks, squares and environmental sanitation.

e/ To arrange spaces and locations for festival facilities.

g/ To develop human resources so as to ensure the development and building of Hue city into a festival city: training researchers specialized in traditional cultures and arts; providing training and re-training so as to raise professional qualifications of artists, artisans, creators, critics, directors, general directors, ail supervisors, technical supervisors and marketing supervisors specialized in festival activities and technical staff; providing training in professional skills and foreign languages for workers in the service sector; organizing community-based training courses so as to conserve, inherit, disseminate and develop traditional arts and festival activities.

h/ To form a network for ensuring security and social order and safety for festival activities: building an inter-branch force and network in charge of maintaining security and social order and safety, rescue and salvage activities; formulating plans on coordinated actions in response to complicated circumstances during festival activities; organizing a network of collaborators and volunteer teams to participate in maintaining security and social order and safety for festival activities; building and development a system of fire prevention and fighting and a system for river rescue and salvage; coordinating with schools, agencies, enterprises and grassroots administrations in maintaining security and order, etc.

i/ To attract and extend the participation of political organizations and social organizations in the process of building the festival city and organizing festival activities: creating favorable conditions for socio-economic organizations, mass organizations and professional organizations to participate in building the festival city and organizing festival activities.

k/ To build and develop an apparatus for organizing, administering and exploiting festival services.

The apparatus for festival organization and management will be organized in the following sectors: the state management sector, with the festival steering board and the festival organizing committee; the professional sector, with the festival administering center and the festival art council, and the sector of enterprises and social organizations, with: the association (or club) of festival citys entrepreneurs, and a network of collaborators and volunteers engaged in festival and festival service activities.

3. Types of festivals

a/ General cultural and art festivals, including many activities in different cultural and art domains which are organized in different scales and scopes (national, regional or international) biennially (as at present) or annually (when conditions permit).

b/ Theme festivals are festivals restricted within one cultural-art domain or on a specific theme which may be organized consecutively, several times or once a year, or once every few years.

c/ Other activities: seminars, conferences, sport and physical training activities, tourism, trade fairs, exhibitions and other services.

4. Contents of Hue festivals:

a/ Converging and representing cultural identities of Hue region, Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands.

b/ Converging and representing typical characteristics of the Vietnamese multi-nationality culture and people.

c/ Being a place for cultural attraction, display and exchange between nationalities and countries in the region and the world.

d/ Expressing humanity, the true, the good, and the beautiful, and introducing aesthetic and ethical education to people.

dd/ Conserving, maintaining, improving and promoting national cultural values.

5. Key programs and projects and works prioritized for investment study:

a/ The program on conservation and restoration of tangible and intangible cultural values in direct service of festivals.

b/ The program on building of some new festival facilities.

c/ The program on embellishment and building of urban infrastructure.

d/ The program on development of human resources.

dd/ The program on scientific-technological development and environment.

e/ The program on service development.

g/ The program on tourism development.

Article 2. Some major solutions for implementation of the Scheme

1. Building strong administrations of various levels:

To speed up the process of administrative reform, raising the capability of cadres and civil servants and clearly identifying powers of agencies at all levels, enhancing administrative discipline, fighting bureaucracy, corruption and waste in parallel with ensuring the peoples right to mastery, thus raising effectiveness of socio-economic administration of local authorities at various levels and facilitating the attraction of resources for building Hue city into a festival one.

2. Mobilizing investment capital:

- For budget funds: Apart from investment capital for centrally managed projects executed in the locality, annually, the central budget will provide financial support for investment in the construction of some important facilities within the target program on building the festival city.

- Based on the provisions of land law, the Peoples Committee of Thua Thien Hue province shall adopt appropriate solutions to mobilize capital from the land fund for investment in the building of the Hue festival city in association with making a planning on expansion of the city in the direction of industrialization, modernization and international integration.

- To adopt incentive policies to encourage and attract investment in the province in general and the city in particular; to encourage and call for FDI projects on business and service facilities related to festival activities and organization of festivals and apply the form of BO or BOT to some infrastructure facilities in the city and surrounding areas; to adopt policies to encourage enterprises, organizations and individuals to sponsor the construction of festival facilities and the organization of festival activities; to raise funds from TV copyrights, advertisement, and use of the festival logos.

- To accelerate socialization in the domains of education and training, health, culture-information, physical training and sports with a view to mobilizing all social sources for investment in the development of these domains.

3. Investment capital sources:

a/ The central budget (targeted ailocutions).

b/ Local budgets

- Capital from national target programs.

- ODA capital.

- Contributions of domestic and foreign organizations and individuals.

- Other lawful capital sources.

4. Investment phases:

- The first phase: 2007-2010.

- The second phase: 2011-2015.

5. Planning solutions:

To make planning a routine activity which will serve as an effective tool for the State in economic management. To carry out investment according to planning and the capacity of capital and other resources.

6. Policies on development of human resources and talent attraction:

To prioritize the training of top specialists and high-quality human resources, encourage Hues talents to stay and work in the locality and people of Hue origin to return to, or contribute to the construction of, their homeland and the festival city; to attract intellectual contributions of talents across the country and overseas Vietnamese to the building of a festival city bearing the Vietnamese identity. To adopt policies on preferential treatment and assistance for artists and artisans of traditional arts and crafts to improve their qualifications and hand down their crafts to young generations, encourage young people to learn traditional crafts or arts and raise their professional qualifications.

7. To extend and develop coordinative relationship with other localities at home and abroad: further attracting the participation of domestic localities and nationalities in festival activities for Hue city to actually become a typical festival city of Vietnam and, at the same time, adopt appropriate policies to enhance and extend international relations so as to further enrich the contents and forms of festival activities and attract more resources.

Article 3. Organization of implementation

1. Based on the objectives, tasks and orientations for the building of Hue festival, the Peoples Committee of Thua Thien Hue province shall:

a/ Assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with concerned ministries and branches in. studying, adjusting and supplementing the master plan on socio-economic development of Thua Thien Hue province in line with the objective of building Hue city into a festival one.

b/ On the basis of careful consideration, well combine construction and development with conservation, restoration and exploitation of UNESCO-recognized relics, building the Hue ancient capital city into a modern city, imbued with.national identity and a cultural-tourist center of the whole country. To make detailed construction plannings for all areas and urban design plannings for areas prioritized for development; to make plannings and plans on land use and plannings on development of branches and domains of Hue city so as to ensure comprehensive and synchronous development.

c/ To formulate a planning for the Huong river basin and devise specific and comprehensive solutions to exploiting and sustainably using natural resources and protecting the environment in the Huong river basin.

d/ To study, formulate, promulgate or propose competent state agencies to promulgate mechanisms and policies suitable to development requirements of Hue city in each period according to the objective of building Hue city into a festival one so as to attract and mobilize resources for the implementation of the scheme.

2. Concerned ministries and branches shall coordinate with and support the Peoples Committee of Thua Thien Hue province in studying and formulating the above-said plannings; study, formulate, promulgate or propose competent state agencies to promulgate a number of mechanisms and policies suitable to the requirements for building of Hue city into a festival one in each period so as to mobilize and use resources and encourage and attract investment, ensuring the successful realization of set objectives, tasks and orientations. To speed up investment in important works and projects related to the building of the Hue festival city. To study, consider, amend and supplement branch development plannings and investment plans on works and projects included in the scheme.

Article 4. This Decision takes effect 15 days after its publication in CONG BAO.

Article 5. The President of the Peoples Committee of Thua Thien Hue province, ministers and heads of ministerial-level agencies and government-attached agencies shall implement this Decision.