Hanoi - Vietnamese golf promoters Thursday rejected claims made at a recent conference that golf course construction should be restricted due to negative environmental and social impact.

   At a conference held Wednesday in Hanoi by Vietnam's Federation of Civil Engineering Associations, environmental and social scientists said golf courses took too much land away from agricultural uses, required heavy use of pesticides, and generated few economic benefits for local communities.

   In response, Nguyen Ngoc Chu, general secretary of the Vietnam Golf Association, told the German Press Agency dpa that golf course construction represented "inevitable progress."

   "Vietnam lacks sufficient green space," Chu said and suggested cities could meet part of a government mandate to reserve 15 to 20 per cent of their land for green space by building more golf courses.

   Golf courses require less than half the fertilizer than the equivalent area of rice paddies, Chu said.

   Chu's figures directly contradicted those presented at the conference by Dang Van Dam of the Vietnam Environment Association. Dam said each hectare of golf links requires 1.5 tons of chemicals, three times the amount used in agricultural production.

   In another paper at the conference, Nguyen Hong Thuc of Vietnam's Settlement Research Institute found that if the 70 hectares taken up by an average 18-hole golf course were devoted to farmland, the area would support 7,000 people and produce 350 tons of rice per crop.

   Thuc wrote that the average golf project generates 200-400 jobs, with an average salary of 1-1.5 million dong (55-85 dollars) per month.

   Vietnam currently has 76 golf courses completed or under construction, with a further 68 having applied for licenses. The total land allocated for all 144 courses comes to over 45,000 hectares.

   Only 18 of the golf courses are open for business so far. Vietnam's Golf Association estimates there are 10,000 active golfers in the country.

   Vietnam's water-rich lowland areas, where most land suitable for farming or golfing is found, are densely populated and intensely cultivated. Land prices are high, but the communist government's control over land management means that land allocation is often not based on market values.

   "At the moment every province wants to allocate land for golf courses. Golf courses only serve rich people," said Tuong Lai, a former director of the Vietnam Sociology Institute. "The golf industry should be encouraged to serve the development of the country, but how to harmonize golf courses and agricultural land is a big problem."