AsemconnectVietnam -  The sixth Buon Ma Thuot Coffee and the 2017 Central Highlands Gong Culture Festival concluded in Buon Ma Thuot city in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak on March 13.

According to the organizing board, around 20,000 local and international visitors came to the week-long festivals to enjoy coffee and cultural and sports activities representing the unique cultural cachet of ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands.

The Buon Ma Thuot coffee festival had 12 main activities, with the highlight being the coffee exhibition fair featuring 734 booths from 184 enterprises, including 58 booths from 12 foreign enterprises.

An investment promotion conference organised during the festival saw the granting of approval, investment certificates and the signing of investment MoUs  to 25 projects in the region worth 88 trillion VND (four billion USD) in total.

Thematic seminars focusing on coffee and agricultural development in the Central Highlands attracted large numbers of policy makers, scientists and businesspeople. 

The Central Highlands Gong Culture Festival, with the participation of nearly 600 artisans, local and international artists, aimed to raise awareness of preserving and promoting the values of the gong space culture, which is recognised by UNESCO as part of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Culture Space, in the context of international integration.

The Central Highlands, with around 500,000 ha under coffee, is the largest coffee-growing region in Vietnam. The country has about 643,160ha of land for coffee trees at present, and exports an average of 1.2-1.5 million tonnes of coffee each year in the past 10 years.

Vietnam is the second-largest coffee exporter in the world, following Brazil.

Source: VNA