1. Pressure on forests and forest land come first from the increasing Vietnamese population (at a yearly rate of 1.7% during the years 2005-2010), which has strong impacts on forestry development, because:
· Food production and security have got first priority in Vietnam. To secure supply to a very big population of 95 million people, besides improvements in technologies, there should be an expansion of the farmlands for agriculture production. As a result, most lands found to be suitable for farm crop cultivation will be reclaimed and developed into farm lands.· The demands in fuelwood and timber for construction and furniture making are going to increase (to 9 million cu.m. of timber and fuelwood and 3 million cu.m. of timber for the building and woodworking industries.
2. The speed of development in urbanization and industrialization is also accelerating. With a planned speed of development of 13-15% in urbanization and industrialization to be attained in the year 2010. Forest assets are going to experience strong impacts, because:
· Much land is needed for the building of the network of roads and of new urban areas, all of which might contribute to the shrinkage of the forest assets:· People are going capitalize on competition, with lesser and lesser number of them living with forestry (which provides only low incomes)
3. Foreign investments are rather scarce in forest industries and forest product processing, because of limited forest resources available in this country, while private entrepreneurs and state-owned agencies willing to get involved in forestry business have not got enough capital for investment and replacement of obsolete equipment.
