Deputy MARD Minister Ho Xuan Hung unveiled the plan at a workshop onSeptember 17 as part of a one-week festival entitled “Crafts Villages,Crafts Streets of Thang Long-Hanoi” beginning on September 16.
Hung said the scheme would also aim to harmonise production whilemaintaining traditional cultural identity and focusing on crafts of richcultural and economic value for sustainable development.
Along with the conservation of traditional crafts in danger ofextinction, such as handmade Nepal paper in Van Canh village andtraditional music instruments in Dao Xa village, MARD plans to developnew crafts in several villages to meet market demand, said the deputyminister.
He said the ministry has worked outnumerous concrete steps to speed up the work such as upgrading ruraltraffic and communications systems, integrating tourism into traditionalcrafts development and intensifying investments in personnel training.
MARD also plans to diversify financial sources forconservation and development of traditional crafts villages, Hungadded.
The scheme was prompted by the fact thatcraft village conservation has been ignored to some extent since 2000and the work has revealed some problems such as serious environmentalpollution, limited market share, poor product design and unknowntrademarks.
Hanoi is home to 1,350 craftsvillages, accounting for almost 59 percent of the total number ofvillages nationwide and providing jobs for over 626,000 locals. Theirproduction value reached over 7.65 trillion VND (38.76 billion USD)annually, making up 8.4 percent of the municipal industrial revenues.
The history of municipal crafts villages dates back hundreds ofyears. For example the Bat Trang ceramics village was founded 600 yearsago, the Chuon Ngo mother-of-pearl village, 1,000 years ago and the VanPhuc Natural Silk village, 1,200 years ago.
Manyof these crafts were typical to Hanoi as they are only produced inthe capital city - such as porcelain, gold and silver coating andnatural silk making./.