OR/18/068 Data availability

Bide, T P, Brown, T J, Petavratzi, E, and Mankelow, J M. 2018. Vietnam – Hanoi city material flows. Nottingham, UK, British geological Survey. (OR/18/068).

The first phase of this work involved identifying data sources that could be used to conduct material flow analysis or supply and demand analysis at a national/regional/city level in Vietnam. This is a necessary step in both assessing at what resolution the analysis can be conducted and to identify significant data gaps.

A wide range of data types were considered before focusing on minerals and especially construction minerals. The most useful datasets identified were:

Mineral production
Trade (imports and exports)
Consumption of mineral resources
Land use
Population changes

Other data, which may be useful included:

Recycling rates of construction materials
Price data
Construction activity
Mineral resources and reserves

Data available for vietnam from international sources

BGS World Mineral Production

BGS compiles annual data for mineral production by country worldwide for more than 70 mineral commodities. Long time series are available with records for many commodities going back over 100 years. Data is compiled on an annual basis by BGS from a wide range of sources: home and overseas government departments, national statistical offices, specialist commodity authorities, company reports, and a network of contacts throughout the world. The latest data is for 2016 which was published in February 2018; for most of this scoping study the most recent year available was 2015. Data can be downloaded from here: https://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/statistics/worldStatistics.html and is available in an internal BGS database, which has been queried to produce tables in Appendix 1.

USGS minerals data

Similar to BGS the USGS also publish data, both commodity and country specific, on an annual basis, worldwide. This consists of production data, a brief commentary about the country’s mineral industry and a list of operating minerals companies. The most recent factsheet for Vietnam is for 2014 and is located here: https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/2014/myb3-2014-vn.pdf

UN commodity trade data

The UN provide a free-to-access data portal for global trade data, which is accessible at: https://comtrade.un.org/. Data is compiled nationally, on an annual basis from statistics reported by individual countries. Data for individual mineral commodities, in terms of value and tonnage, can be extracted. Some data can be confidential and the latest is reliant on when it was provided by the reporting country. The most recent data for Vietnam currently is for 2015. There are also no data available for quantities for aggregate minerals for Vietnam, only values in US$. Data are also missing for some years for iron and steel trade however, data could possibly be reconstructed by analysing exports from the world to Vietnam and imports to the world from Vietnam.

World Bureau of Metal Statistics

This is a small, commercial organisation that compiles annual statistics for predominantly non-ferrous metals but a few other metals too. BGS has access to their monthly reports containing data on production, trade and consumption on a national basis and is available for 1–2 months behind the current date. The reports are stored on the BGS’s Electronic Record Management System (ERMS). Some of the production data are incorporated into the BGS World Mineral Production data, but this source also contains consumption statistics compiled on a national level. The WBMS holds the IPR for these figures and permission would need to be sought if they were to be used.

Data available within Vietnam

National scale data

Data for Vietnam seems difficult to find. This is most likely due to a combination of a language barrier and the lack of an apparent streamlined reporting structure. There are several government departments which have extensive websites, such as the ministry of construction (https://www.xaydung.gov.vn/en/trang-vat-lieu-xay-dung) or the general department of Geology and Minerals of Vietnam (DGMV) (https://dgmv.gov.vn/index.php?lang=vi), but little in the way of data applicable to material flow analysis. The latter website does have some information on illegal river sand mining, which although does not contain any figures, is an indicator of the supply issues facing Vietnam. The General Statistics Office of Vietnam (discussed in more detail below; https://www.gso.gov.vn) also has a range of national data, such as industrial products and imports and exports by theme. However, these are mostly indexed so may be of limited use. The Statistics Office does have some statistics for mineral production, including sand and gravel, on a national level (but not for all minerals) together with other data that can be used as proxies for demand.

There are also several bodies representing the minerals and construction sector in Vietnam that have no information published on their respective websites but may be useful contacts. These include: the cement producers trade association of Vietnam (https://www.vnca.org.vn/vn/) and the Vietnamese association for building materials (https://hoivlxdvn.org.vn).

Specifically regarding sand and gravel, there are also numerous news articles on illegal mining and the issues it is causing in Vietnam and in the Red River Delta around Hanoi (for links see Appendix 3 - Data sets with useful information for Vietnam/Hanoi). These articles can contain information on prices, supply and demand suggesting that figures on construction material supply and demand are available for Vietnam, however data does not seem to be readily available on the internet. One article presents data sourced from the Department of Construction Materials, however nothing appears available on the Department’s website. The same article also quotes the Head of the Construction Material Division stating that provinces are not permitted to sell or transfer sand to other provinces, indicating that there may be no official data for the movement (flow) of this particular construction material from one province to another within the country because in theory it does not occur.

Regional data

Some regional data can be obtained from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam relating to, for example, land use or population. Much of these data are also available at ‘province’ level for which Hanoi can be separated out specifically (see below). However, statistics for the number of new houses constructed are only available by region (e.g. the Red River Delta region) rather than for individual cities.

City level

There appears to be little in the way of statistics specifically regarding minerals supply to Hanoi. However, there are some data available from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam which can be used as proxies for material demand. For example, under the land and climate statistics section data for land use are available and the change from agricultural to housing may give an indication of the increases in development and consequently the demand for construction materials. Similarly, under the population and employment statistics section there are data for change in population density by province, which could potentially act as a proxy for construction material demand.

Under the transport statistical data section there are data for volume of freight by province (in thousand tonnes) and this would be very useful for materials flow analysis. However, these data do not differentiate between different freight types (so is likely to be dominated by non-mineral goods). Furthermore, it is not clear whether the tonnages are recorded at the source or destination.

There is a separate department of construction for Hanoi City (https://www.soxaydung.hanoi.gov.vn/vi-vn) and this website does have some price information for construction materials but no other data.

Summary

Table 2nbsp; Summary of data availability.
Vietnam	Data Type
Vietnam	Production	Trade	Consumption/ demand	Reserves/ resources	Other relevant data
National	Yes, from DGMV, statistics office and BGS	Yes/partial UN Comtrade only has values for many commodities	No	No	Statistics Office has indexed data for trade and industrial growth, some data for sand and gravel is in specific news articles.
Regional	No	No	Not directly	No	The Statistics Office has some data that may be used as a proxy for material demand/consumption.
City	No	No	No	No	Price data is available from The Department of Construction for Hanoi.

Data gaps identified

There are no publically available city level data for material production or flows for Hanoi. Some regional data on demand and production may be useful as a proxy for the city level but there are no data that can be used as a proxy for the flow of material into a city.
There are gaps in national trade data reported by Vietnam for the mass of certain materials traded.
There are no data on material flows on a regional level for Vietnam.
There are several publications which are referenced on various websites which could be of great use but are not available publically on the internet. These include:

- Statistics from the Department of Construction of Vietnam (these are referenced in various news articles but do not appear on the Departments website)

- Statistics from the Vietnamese cement producers association (these are referenced in various news articles but do not appear on the associations website)

Due to illegal mining it is possible that any flow data between administrate boundaries (if available) and production data for sand and gravel extraction may be under reported.
There are very little data regarding secondary resources apart from a few mentions of recycled aggregates in news articles and peer reviewed literature for Vietnam.