economy

The construction of regional industry factories is proceeding at a fast pace in 20 cities and counties across the DPRK. Accordingly, provinces, cities and counties are vigorously stepping up the building of raw materials bases for ensuring the normal operation of the factories.

With emphasis placed on making effective use of locally available raw materials, they are striving to secure raw materials bases, oil bearing forests, raw-material forests for paper production and so on in an efficient way.

South Hwanghae Province organized a demonstration related to the creation of evodia and poplar forests in Unchon County last March to encourage other cities and counties to map out detailed plans for the creation of forests for raw materials according to their regional characteristics and push ahead with the production of saplings and tree planting.

Unchon County gave priority to securing saplings and pressed on with tree planting to create hundreds of hectares of new forests for raw materials during the spring tree-planting season, while Jaeryong County created more forests for raw materials than planned, including 70 hectares of evodia forests and 50-odd hectares of poplar forests.

Pyoksong County is putting spurs to planting more than 50 000 oil-bearing crops and gathering natural materials while directing primary efforts to expanding raw materials bases and improving soil fertility.

Paechon, Thaethan, Jangyon and Pongchon counties newly planted well over 100 hectares of evodia, poplar and wild fruit tree forests, while other cities and counties in the province, including Haeju City and Anak, Samchon and Sinchon counties, created forests of various wild fruit trees on a large scale to turn local mountains into reliable raw materials bases for regional-industry factories.

Nampho City pushed forward with the creation of oil-bearing forests and raw-material forests for paper production, thus planting 150 hectares of forests of economic value with evodia, bamboo-willow trees, Sangwon poplar and other trees.

The Chollima District evodia forestry station positively introduced advanced cultivation and nutrition management methods to newly create scores of hectares of evodia forests, while Onchon County and Waudo District dug holes and laid humus soil in forests of economic value and other places with favourable conditions for cultivation as required by regulations and employed different bioactivators to provide favourable conditions for the growth of planted trees.

Jagang Province secured thousands of hectares of areas for raw materials bases and Kangwon Province secured more than 1 700 hectares of land for crop cultivation and planted it with seeds and saplings of high-yield varieties.

According to an official of the non-permanent central committee for promoting the Regional Development 20×10 Policy, the creation of raw materials bases has been almost finished in every region.