Sand in Vietnam — VietEcon

I feel like I didn’t really do justice to all of the aspects of land yesterday, so I will try to return to it at a later date. Specifically, I didn’t talk about how the revenues are calculated, how land is allocated, corruption surrounding land allocations, what that means for property developers, farmers, etc. Land is a big issue, and I really just skimmed the surface.

But, I found two interesting stories. The first was about hopes that North Korea would use Vietnam as a model for engagement with the world. I will try to write about this tomorrow, because I think it bears some reflection.

CEMENT PRODUCTION REACHED MORE THAN 90M TONNES IN 2018, WITH ABOUT 2/3RDS OF THAT FOR THE DOMESTIC MARKET SOURCE: CEMNET.COM, STOXPLUS, VIETECON

The second, which is definitely less thought about that North Korea is: sand. Turns out, if you didn’t know, we are running out of sand in the world. Or specifically, the right type of sand that is used in construction. And lots of sand is used in construction, in glass making, a molding material for metal works, landscaping, also, of course, sandpaper. In construction, it’s mainly used to make mortar and concrete and asphalt. Concrete is actually just cement mixed with sand, water and rock. And cement is made from sand too.

Just a quick calculation. To make concrete, you use 1 part cement, 2 parts sand and 3 parts gravel. So sand makes up a third of the volume of concrete. Based on this report, the world makes 10 bn tonnes of concrete each year, so that would require 2.8bn tonnes of sand. And it has to be a certain type of sand. The total consumption of sand is said to be 15bn tonnes. Cement production is about 4bn tonnes a year, with about half of that going to make concrete. And cement can use sand as well.

In Vietnam, total production was just over 90m tonnes in 2018, of which 60m were used domestically. If I assume about 50% is used to make concrete (which may be low but appears to be the usage world wide), that means almost 220m tonnes of concrete were made, using 60m tonnes of sand. That’s a lot of sand, around 30m cubic meters. Another source says that the country needs 50-60m cubic meters a year, almost double my calculations.

That’s a big amount of sand. About the size of Vancouver.

What I was surprised about is that Vietnam is actually cracking down on illegal sand exploitation. HCMC’s People’s Committee fined two companies for illegally extracting sand, and they also confiscated sand and some equipment. The fines were small (VN95m), but the confiscation was real, worth VN10bn for each company, according to the article.

Of course, sand is related to climate change, since sand helps moderate the impacts of extreme weather, like flooding. And of course saltwater intrusion into rivers, like the Mekong, can be worsened by the lack of sand.

The construction industry is an important and growing part of the Vietnamese economy, so it will be difficult for the country to do with this, but better regulations plus potentially some incentives to use other materials rather than sand to make concrete would be helpful.