Economy
The region is famous as a large rice growing area. It produces about half of the total of Vietnam's rice output. Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice globally after Thailand. In fact, the delta produces more rice than Korea and Japan combined. Additionally, the region is home to a large aquacultural industry of basa fish, Tra catfish and shrimp, much of which is exported.
The construction of the Can Tho Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge over the largest distributary of the Mekong River, was completed on April 12, 2010, three years after a collapse that killed 54 and injured nearly 100 workers. The bridge replaces the ferry system that currently runs along National Road 1A, and links Vĩnh Long Province and Cần Thơ city. The cost of construction is estimated to be 4.842 trillion Vietnamese đồng (approximately 342.6 million U.S. dollars), making it the most expensive bridge in Vietnam.
Read more about this topic: Mekong Delta
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)