Unleash your inner potential to achieve breakthroughs.

During the historic month of April, Ho Chi Minh City entered a period of rapid operation, with a spirit of "acceleration" clearly demonstrated through a series of infrastructure, transportation, and school projects that are about to be inaugurated.

These are the pillars that provide the impetus for achieving double-digit growth. Simultaneously, the city is proactively preparing an even more crucial foundation: the "institutional foundation" for a new phase of development.

Following expert consultations on the draft Law on Special Urban Areas in early April 2026, the city plans to hold a scientific workshop titled "Law on Special Urban Areas - An Institutional Breakthrough for Ho Chi Minh City" in May. The workshop's activities are meticulously prepared, based on both scientific and practical foundations, aiming to establish a stable, long-term legal framework for sustainable development.

The importance of this law is directly linked to the city's leading role: by 2025, Ho Chi Minh City aims to maintain its leading position, contributing approximately 23% of the national GDP and nearly 30% of the total national budget revenue. Given this scale and ambitious development goals, there is a need to refine appropriate mechanisms and policies, rather than simply following the national "general framework," in order to maximize the city's potential and advantages.

In recent times, the special mechanisms under Resolution 98/2023/QH15 of the National Assembly (on piloting some special mechanisms and policies for the development of Ho Chi Minh City) and its "upgraded" Resolution 260/2025/QH15 have created a new impetus, helping the city unlock many development resources. However, these resolutions are still pilot in nature and, more importantly, still have a "gap" compared to the current legal system. In the new development space, the "institutional framework" applied universally is becoming increasingly restrictive for the city.

The development of a special urban law with a suitable legal framework, through the promotion of decentralization and delegation of power, becomes an essential condition for cities to fully realize their potential and advantages. This spirit is also clearly emphasized at the first session of the 16th National Assembly, where many opinions stressed the need to improve institutions to create room for growth poles to play a leading role, especially upgrading resolutions into laws and designing a sufficiently flexible legal framework to correctly and effectively address bottlenecks hindering development.

For Ho Chi Minh City, persistent problems such as overloaded infrastructure, traffic congestion, flooding, and environmental pollution highlight the challenges not only in terms of resource scarcity but also in the lack of mechanisms for organizing and utilizing resources flexibly and effectively. From this perspective, proposals to increase autonomy, expand capital mobilization tools, create breakthroughs in implementing public-private partnership policies, or establish a sandbox mechanism for innovation all aim at the common goal of empowering the city to act proactively and quickly, while maintaining clear accountability, in the spirit of "local decision-making, local action, local accountability."

Nationwide, the Law on Special Urban Areas is not exclusive to Ho Chi Minh City. It could also become an "institutional laboratory" for the country's urban governance reform process. If properly designed and effectively implemented, this law will contribute to shaping a more modern, flexible, and efficient governance model, thereby creating a wider ripple effect throughout the country.

Currently, in the context of the whole country striving to achieve double-digit growth, the role of growth poles like Ho Chi Minh City is becoming especially important and needs to be supported by appropriate institutions.

A sufficiently broad and solid institutional "railway" will help Ho Chi Minh City unlock its internal potential, unleash creativity, achieve breakthrough development, and continue to strongly promote its leading role, creating a ripple effect for the national economy to rapidly advance into a new era of development.

KIEU PHONG

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/khoi-thong-noi-luc-de-but-pha-post847732.html