The HCM City People’s Committee unveiled several ambitious targets for this year at a review meeting yesterday.– Photo thanhuytphcm.vn

HCM City – The HCM City People’s Committee unveiled several ambitious targets for this year at a review meeting yesterday.

It listed administrative reform, e-governance, improvement in public administration, creation of a healthy business environment, encouragement for innovation, start-up, and mitigating climate change, flooding, traffic congestion, and pollution.

“The city aims to achieve 8.3 – 8.5 per cent growth and have 46,200 new enterprises in 2019,” Lê Thanh Liêm, deputy chairman of the People’s Committee, told the meeting.

He said 130,000 jobs would be created and poverty would be reduced by 0.7 %.

“Of the city’s workforce, 83 per cent would have been trained and the jobless rate will be under 3.8 per cent.”

Around 8 million square metres of housing space would be added in 2019, and each resident would have an average of 20sq.m of space, he said.

“The city will have 19 doctors and 42 beds for every 10,000 population and 100 per cent of the population will have healthcare insurance,”

All households would get clean water and groundwater use would be only 25 per cent of the 2018 level, he said.

“Hundred per cent of household solid waste and industrial wastewater will be treated as will 98 per cent of hospital wastewater.

“The city will try to enter the top 20 in the Public Administration Performance Index, top 10 in the Public Administration Reform Index and top five in the Provincial Competitiveness Index.”

People’s Committee chairman Nguyễn Thành Phong yesterday named Bùi Xuân Cường, director of the Department of Transport, as head of the Management Authority for Urban Railway (MAUR) until 2020 in the place of Lê Nguyễn Minh Quang, who resigned for personal reasons.

Cường, 43, was head of MAUR for a year until August 2015 when he became chief of the transport department.

Phong said that the ongoing urban railway project is vital to upgrade transport infrastructure.

“The city has ordered completion of the metro line No 1 from Bến Thành to Suối Tiên by 2020. Currently 61 per cent of the work has been completed.”

Meanwhile, the State Audit of Việt Nam (SAV) has pointed out several lapses in the project.

It said in 2011 the People’s Committee had approved an increase in the cost of the project from VNĐ17.2 trillion (US$740.4 million) to more than VNĐ47.3 trillion ($2.01 billion).

But it did so without explaining where the additional money would come from or assessing investment efficiency, it said.

Besides, the decision was unauthorised because national projects costing more than VNĐ35 trillion ($1.5 billion) need to be approved by the Prime Minister, it said. -- VNS