General information

- Geographic location: Hanoi is bounded by Thai Nguyen, Bac Giang provinces to the Norther and Northern east, by Ha Tay and Vinh Phuc provinces to the West and Northern West, by Ha Tay to the South, by Bac Ninh and Hung Yen province to the East and Southern East.

- Area: 921.8km²

- Topographic features: The major feature of Hanoi is plain whose level is raised by rivers with large, high alluvial grounds and benches.

- Administrative units: Hanoi is divided into 9 inner districts: Ba Dinh, Hoan Kiem, Hai Ba Trung, Dong Da, Tay Ho, Thanh Xuan, Cau Giay, Long Bien, Hoang Mai and 5 suburban districts: Dong Anh, Gia Lam, Soc Son, Thanh Tri, Tu Liem.

- Area: 3,289,300 (Statistics of the year 2007 – General Office of Statistics)

Resources

- Natural resources: Hanoi is not endowed with diversified natural resources. It has 4 main types of lands: alluvial soil inside the dyke, alluvial soil outside the dyke, impoverished soil and mountainous soil. There are forests in Hanoi but only with secondary natural plants mainly found in Soc Son suburban districts.

- Tourism resources: There are over 300 recognized cultural and historical monuments out of the total 2,000 ones, including the ones related to the country’s founding and defending such as Co Loa ancient capital, Soc Son historical monument, etc. Hanoi also has traditional art –culture such as water puppet which is attractions to tourists who want to know about Vietnamese traditional arts.

- Human resources: The number of working-age people is 1.6 million (out of the total population of 3,398,889) accounting for 58%. Hanoi has young labour force with 43% under the age of 35, in which approx. 40,000 newly enter the labour market everyday. There are over 100,000 higher education degree holders; 200,000 university, college degree holders; over 100,000 professional school certificate holders. Hanoian is well known to be elegant, quick to understand new things, able to create economic and cultural values of high level and working in various traditional professions

Infrastructure

 - Transportation: It is convenient to travel in/to/from Hanoi with 3 main means of transportation: roadway, railway and airway. Hanoi is the starting point of many national highways such as national highways No. 5,2,3 and of North-South railway route. There are two airports in Hanoi: one is Noi Bai international airport and the other is Gia Lam airport.

- Power supply system: Hanoi Power Company plays a key role in power supply for the political, socio-economic development, daily life of people and national defence. The commodity electricity output was 4,442kvh in 2006 (4,034kvh in 2005). However, the power supply is still not sufficient.

- Post and telecommunication system: Hanoi has one of the best post and telecommunication system nationwide with many post offices, transmission stations. The system can meet the people’s demand.

- Industrial zones: There are 5 big industrial zones in Hanoi: Sai Dong B with the area of 85 hectares, Thang Long with the area of 150 hectares, Noi Bai with the area of 100 hectares, Hanoi – Dai Tu with the area of 40 hectares, Nam Thang Long (Southern Thang Long) with the area of 120 hectares.

Development plan up to the year 2010

- GDP growth rate: It is planned to reach the are of 9% in which industry accounts for 42%, service accounts for 56% and agriculture accounts for 2%.

- Sectors development plan:

           + Services: It is planned to reach the average rate of 8.5-9.5% for the period 2006-2010. Priorities will be given to developing high quality service, service connecting with industry-agriculture, serving people’s healthy physical and spiritual demand, especially tourism, finance-banking, trade, etc.

            + Agriculture-Forestry-Fishery: It is planned to reach the average rate of 3% for the period 2006-2010 with higher quality agricultural products, modernization of agriculture, urbanization in rural areas, development of agriculture in connection with economic development to form urban agriculture in which priorities will be given to changes in production structure to create more economically valuable products, biological technology development, etc.

            + Industry: It is planned to reach the average rate of 10-11% for the period 2006 to 2010 with priorities given to developing centered , small, medium scaled industrial zones; promoting goods, products of high intellectual technology; Improving environmental pollutions caused by enterprises (changing their productions or moving them to sparsely populated regions); expanding old suburban industrial zones provided that they have enough land for expansion and the expansion go in line with general planning of the region; further developing key industries such as engineering, electronics-computering, textile, footwear, food processing, ect.; encouraging labour intensive industries.