Ninh Thuan

Geography and climate

Ninh Thuận lay at the southern edge of the South Central Coast, roughly parallelogram-shaped, bordered by Khánh Hòa to the north, Lâm Đồng to the west, Bình Thuận to the south and the East Sea to the east^[1]. Hills and mountains covered about 63.2 percent of its area, semi-mountainous terrain 14.4 percent and coastal plains 22.4 percent, with a coastline of about 105 km and three sea gates at Đông Hải, Cà Ná and Khánh Hải^[1].

The province had a tropical savanna to semi-arid climate, hot, dry and windy, with a rainy season from September to November and a dry season from December to August; Vietnamese Wikipedia gives average annual rainfall of only 700 to 800 mm, among the lowest in the country, and mean annual temperature of 26 to 27 degrees Celsius^[1]. English Wikipedia's climate box for Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm, covering 1993 to 2020, records a mean annual temperature of 27.1 degrees Celsius, annual rainfall of 838.5 mm and 3,029 hours of sunshine a year, and describes the city as among the least rainy in Vietnam and the driest in South East Asia outside Myanmar's Dry Zone^[4]. Storms struck the former province only about 0.3 to 0.4 times a year, well below the national average^[1].

History

The territory was long part of the Cham polity of Panduranga; during the Hoàn Vương period, from 757 to 859, its capital, Virapura, stood at what is now Phước Nam commune in Thuận Nam, and from 1471 to 1613 the Cham capital sat at Băl Cau, on the site of modern Phan Rang^[5]. In 1653 the Nguyễn lord Nguyễn Phúc Tần took the area north of the Phan Rang river, and in 1832, in the twelfth year of the Minh Mạng era, the Nguyễn court split the former Thuận Thành territory into the prefectures of Ninh Thuận and Hàm Thuận under a new Bình Thuận province, the first use of the name Ninh Thuận^[1].

France created a separate Phan Rang province in 1901; it was abolished in 1913, re-established in 1922, and renamed Ninh Thuận in 1956^[1]. Under the Republic of Vietnam the province's boundaries from 1958 already matched the modern province^[1]. After 1975 Ninh Thuận was merged with Bình Thuận and Bình Tuy into Thuận Hải province in February 1976; the National Assembly split Thuận Hải back into Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận on 26 December 1991^[1]. Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm town became a city on 8 February 2007 under Decree 21/2007/NĐ-CP and was recognised as a class II urban area on 26 February 2015^[1].

Districts before 2025

At its dissolution Ninh Thuận comprised the city of Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm and six rural districts, together holding 62 commune-level units: 47 communes, 12 wards and 3 townships^[1]. Bác Ái, the largest and least populated district at 1,027 km² and 27,204 people, occupied the mountainous north-west, while Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm, at 79.19 km², held the densest population by far^[1].

Economy

Ninh Thuận's GRDP grew an estimated 13.18 percent in 2019 over 2018, led by industry and construction, up 39.7 percent, with agriculture, forestry and fishing up 6 percent and services up 6.87 percent; the economy that year was divided 36.96 percent agriculture, forestry and fishing, 24.7 percent industry and construction and 38.34 percent services^[6]. For 2024 Vietnamese Wikipedia gives the province a GRDP of 60,161.4 billion VND (2.58 billion USD), GRDP per head of 78.56 million VND (3,385 USD) and GRDP growth of 10.25 percent, ranking it 57th, 45th and 10th respectively among Vietnam's provinces that year^[1].

Ninh Thuận grew more grapes than any other province, concentrated in Ninh Phước and Thuận Nam districts, alongside onions and garlic around Phan Rang-Tháp Chàm and Ninh Hải, and was a major national producer of shrimp larvae, with an estimated 33.9 billion larvae produced in 2019^[6]. The province was also developed as, in one government source's words, the country's largest renewable energy centre: by 2022 it had 3,055.6 MW of renewable capacity in operation, comprising 666.75 MW of onshore wind, 2,256.85 MW of solar power and 131.95 MW of small and medium hydropower, generating more than 6,900 million kWh a year^[7].

The nuclear power project

In 2009 the National Assembly approved Vietnam's first nuclear power project, two plants of more than 4,000 MW combined capacity on 1,642 hectares at Phước Dinh and Vĩnh Hải communes, both then in Ninh Thuận^[8]. The National Assembly voted to halt the project on 22 November 2016, citing the country's economic conditions rather than any technical problem^[8]. Eight years later, at its 8th session, the 15th National Assembly passed a resolution on 30 November 2024 agreeing to continue the investment policy, days after the Communist Party's Central Committee had endorsed a restart on 25 November 2024^[8][9]. On 20 August 2025 the Politburo's Resolution 70-NQ/TW on national energy security set a target of bringing the Ninh Thuận 1 and Ninh Thuận 2 plants into operation between 2030 and 2035, by which time the area is part of Khánh Hòa province^[9].

Cham heritage

Ninh Thuận held the largest concentration of Cham people in Vietnam, with 22 Cham villages recorded across six districts and the city; at the 1 April 2009 census the province's population of 34 ethnic groups included 432,399 Kinh, 67,274 Cham and 58,911 Ra Glai^[1]. At the 1 April 2019 census, 251,292 people in the province reported a religious affiliation across ten religions: 97,560 Catholic, 44,226 Buddhist, 62,699 recorded under the Brahmanist (Bà La Môn) category associated with Cham Balamon practice, and 44,990 under the Islam (Hồi giáo) category, which in Ninh Thuận consists mainly of Cham Bani communities, with smaller numbers of Protestants and other faiths^[1]. The Po Klong Garai towers on the edge of Phan Rang, host to the annual Katê festival, are the best-known monument of this heritage, described in their own article.