The Department of Agriculture and Environment of Gia Lai province said that the whole province currently has about 200 valid mineral exploitation licenses. In 2025, the exploitation output reached about 2.2 million m3 of crushed stone, 360 thousand m3 of block stone, 750 thousand m3 of construction sand, nearly 4 million m3 of leveling soil and 20 thousand m3 of clay for brick and tile making. The total revenue from this activity reached more than 367 billion VND.
In the context of the period 2025 - 2026, Gia Lai is implementing a series of large-scale transport infrastructure projects, with high demand for construction materials. However, in some areas, especially along major rivers such as the Kon River, Ayun River, Ba River..., there is still a complicated situation of illegal sand mining, causing public outrage. Functional agencies have handled 9 violating businesses with a total amount of more than 1.178 billion VND.
And at the Ba River flowing through Krong Pa district (old), illegal sand mining also often occurs, without installing weighing stations to evade taxes, illegal sand mining; sand sources without invoices and documents, mining exceeding the designed capacity... have caused tax revenue loss for the State.
Mr. Truong Ba Vinh - Head of the Department of Geology and Minerals (Department of Agriculture and Environment of Gia Lai province) said that the installation of weighing stations and surveillance cameras at mines is being gradually implemented, contributing to improving the efficiency of state management and restoring order in mineral exploitation activities.
After the Government issued a Resolution on special mechanisms in the field of minerals, the locality proactively guided communes, wards and project management boards to implement it. The new mechanism helps simplify procedures for licensing, extending, and adjusting exploitation capacity, in order to meet the demand for ordinary materials for key projects, especially the Quy Nhon - Pleiku expressway under construction.
According to Mr. Vinh, project management boards need to soon review and compile a list of mineral mines, prioritizing locations near projects to reduce transportation costs, and at the same time ensure the use of valid invoices in the settlement and finalization of projects using state capital.
For enterprises licensed to exploit minerals, Gia Lai Provincial People's Committee requests enterprises to be responsible for monitoring riverbank erosion, keeping records of riverbank developments, and fully recording when there is an erosion phenomenon.
Functional agencies assess and forecast that mining activities such as: internal transportation from the mine to the storage area, transportation of finished products for consumption... pose a risk of destabilizing the riverbank geology, leading to landslides; disrupting the natural flow of the river, affecting aquatic habitat; damaging local transport infrastructure.
