HCM City – HCM City pledges to protect the legal rights and benefits of the business community, a city leader said.

Speaking at a meeting between city leaders and the enterprise community on Saturday, Nguyễn Thành Phong, chairman of the municipal People’s Committee said, “Enterprises will be checked only once a year and leaders will reduce 30 per cent of their meetings to be able to go into the field and help enterprises handle difficulties,”

“The city will try to cut half of the current time for investment procedures and this year, the administrative reform index of the city will rank in the top ten of the country,” he added.

To create more favourable conditions for the enterprise community, Phong also revealed that a task force to handle land and ground compensation will be set up to assist enterprises.

“Programmes of connecting banking and enterprises, investment stimulation; the establishment of a project development fund and a financial support fund for public-private-partnership will be promoted.”

The chairman also pledged that policies to implement special mechanisms for the city will make enterprises stronger and will “not hinder nor become a burden for the business community,” he added.

At the meeting, Lê Thị Thanh Lâm, deputy general director of Sài Gòn Food Company and representative of the Food Association, asked the relevant authorities to instruct the education sector to receive safe products from the association.

“Our association will provide technical supervision for parents to check the quality of food for children at the school, which can not be done now,” she said.

Lê Hoàng Châu, chairman of the city Real Estate Association, commented that HCM City should consider that the average area for each person to rent in the city be 15 sq.m as in Hà Nội, not 20 sq.m as the Construction Department has just suggested.

Trần Việt Anh, chairman of Nam Thái Sơn Corporation, said HCM City is now losing its competitive advantage in logistics because the city is facing terrible traffic jams and there is no huge storage for logistics.

“Neighbouring provinces such as Bình Dương, Đồng Nai, Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu and Long An are trying to improve their infrastructure and services in logistics by strongly investing in road systems, seaports and storage,” he said.

Trần Anh Tuấn, deputy chairman of the HCM City Computers Association mentioned how to promote startup enterprises.

“Big companies and professional associations should have more of a role and contribution by guiding and assisting startup enterprises,” he said.

At present, HCM City is facing many great challenges. Right now, only 1.49 per cent of the city’s enterprises are big, 5.68 per cent are medium, 4.58 per cent are small and 88.25 per cent are tiny.

The private sector is still the major driver of the development of the city with GDP growth at 8.15 per cent. Each year, the city contributes 27-28 per cent to the national State budget and the city improved the business environment to attract US$10 billion through FDI during 2016 – 2017.

This year, the city will deploy the project “Smart city 2017 – 2020 with vision to 2025” with four solutions: building a sharing database and developing an open data ecosystem; setting up the city’s socio-economic development prediction and stimulation centre; establishing a smart city operation centre; constructing an information safety and security centre.

The city plans to co-operate with the HCM City Business Association to organize the “HCM City Economic Forum” in October. — VNS