Sixty provinces and cities are expected to complete the work of integrating adequate and accurate forest data by the end of 2016, the Viet Nam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST) said.

About 60 provinces and cities nationwide will complete the work of integrating adequate and accurate forest data by the end of this year.

Nguyen Ba Ngai, deputy head of VNFOREST under the agriculture and rural development ministry, said based on adequate information, the administration would submit the management information system for forestry sector regulations to the ministry in the first quarter of this year.

This is a programme funded by the government of Finland to strengthen the implementation of strategies of the forestry sector.

The administration had received forest data from 15 provinces and will soon collect information from more 25 provinces that completed their data collection in 2015, Ngai said at a recent workshop on term review of the project.

The project aims to set up a forest information centre by providing accurate information for decision making at all administrative levels.

The integration and sharing of forest data would help forestry agencies, programmes and projects to access available information to avoid identical investments in the forestry sector, Ngai said.

It also supported the sustainable development of the Vietnamese forestry sector, and would minimise the impact of climate change and help people in remote areas gain access to information sources in the field, he said.