Industry and Handicraft

In 2000, the industry and handicraft sector contributed 12.37% to Ben Tre's GDP and employed 40,200 workers. In 2002, the contribution of this sector increased to 14.27% of the GDP. Between 1997 and 2001, output values of this sector were always on the rise.

Industry and Handicraft

The production capacity of this sector is based heavily on private businesses, employing up to 94.8% of the labour force. Although there has been a regular increase in industrial production in recent years, with an average of 8.7% annually, forms of production are seen to limit to small-scale production, with mostly low-quality or just raw products. Recently, in efforts to race to the country's cause of industrialization and modernization, new investments have been put in re-equipping frozen aquaproducts processing, sugar and tobacco manufacturing units, etc with modern and large-scale production lines.

Apart from
Ben
Tre
Township, the distributive chart of industrial production is clearly composed of two main axes. First, the East-West axis includes areas along
Ben
Tre
River, about 5 km long. And the second is the North-South axis, lying along the National Road 60, around 2 km long. Also, there are two big industrial enterprises located in Chau Thanh district: The Seafood Processing Enterprises No 22 in Tan Thach Commune and the Sugar Factory in An Hiep Commune. Others including small industrial businesses and handicraft producers are concentrated at town and rural market centres.

Ben Tre's current industrial mainstays include firstly food and cereal processing, accounting for 94.5% of the total industrial output value. Next come (coconut) candy manufacture, sugar production, aquaproduct processing, coconut processing (oil, coir yarn, coal, etc). There are already several industrial factories now working in Ben Tre such as The Seafood Processing Enterprise No 84, The Seafood Processing Enterprises No 22, Ben Tre Sugar Factory, and recently, a Malaysian invested coconut processing factory, with capacity of 3,000 tonnes per year, has come into operation. However, the industry has not been working to its full capacity, thus has not effectively employed the province's abundant agricultural as well as industrial material bases. As a result, these are still sold out of the province as raw materials, not as end products. With a cheap local workforce base, many industries already have an undoubtfully competitive edge, but due to the fact that their sales activity is just confined to the internal market, and thus can not produce high output values.

Electricity

Since 1990, Ben Tre electricity has made a big leap. It has since been integrated into the national electrical grid, contibuting greatly to facilitating and driving production and trading, and serving many aspects of social life, especially the rural life. There have been a lot of newly built transforming stations, medium- and low-voltage grid-lines, and a standby station with capacity of 10,500 Kw in
Chet
Say
Bridge, insuring full electricity covering in the province. In 2000, the electricity output reached 169 million Mwh, an average annual increase of 16%, that is 1.9 times the rate of 1996. As for electrical utility scheme, 73% supply for household consumption, 21.8% for industrial production activities, and a mere 0.7% for agricultural production. In 2002, some more projects for rural electrification were put into operation such as Con Linh, Phu Da, Tien Loi, Phong My, and Long Hoa. Besides, the province's electrical services also worked out plans to support 21 rural communes in efforts to reduce the electricity price, to further the installation of direct electrical meters to households, and to push up the electriccal consumption among ordinary consumers.