May and decisive action

Tourism has become a bright spot in the economic picture of Ho Chi Minh City in April when in just 15 days (from April 2 to May 4), it served nearly 2.7 million visitors, with estimated revenue of VND15,700 billion, double the revenue during the Tet holiday. During the peak of the 5-day holiday, the city served about 1.95 million visitors, an increase of 101% over the same period last year, with total revenue estimated at more than VND7,100 billion.

Báo Sài Gòn Giải phóng•08/05/2025

This contributed to the total retail sales of goods and service revenue of the month increasing by 20% in addition to the two indexes of total export value of goods increasing by 9.1%, industrial production (IIP) increasing by 7.9% over the same period. The average consumer price index (CPI) was controlled: 4.21%.

However, in the opposite direction, the index of the mining, production and distribution industry decreased sharply; the inventory index increased. It should be noted that the labor index decreased with the number of job placements and new job creations both being lower while unemployment benefits increased. The number of newly established enterprises and registered capital both decreased (from 35% to over 50%) compared to the same period.

On average, 12 out of 10 enterprises participating in the market withdraw from the market. This affects the investment and social environment of the city, and measures need to be taken to overcome it soon. In addition, the inherent limitation that has not been overcome is that the rate of disbursed public investment capital is still very low (as of April 29, only 6,067 billion VND was disbursed, reaching 7.2%). This consequence reflects that despite changes, the public apparatus is still passive, there is still a situation of pushing and avoiding responsibility for advising and proposing to remove difficulties in the areas under their responsibility.

After the successful parade and march to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification, the city now needs to quickly and decisively embark on groups of solutions to "sprint" for the first 6 months of the year.

In particular, with the significant declines mentioned above, it is necessary to immediately create a "push" in attracting and licensing domestic and foreign investment to regain the confidence of businesses and investors. Regarding the disbursement of public investment capital, it is necessary to identify sectors that are allocated large public investment capital, projects that account for large public investment capital such as metro 2, An Phu intersection... to organize meetings to resolve difficulties, in which focusing on site clearance and capital transfer right now for projects that are difficult to ensure progress.

Within the authority of Ho Chi Minh City, on the one hand, review, arrange, improve the efficiency of management and exploitation of public land funds in the city; improve the efficiency of the specific land valuation council, approve specific land prices; associated with the arrangement and restructuring of state-owned enterprises. On the other hand, focus on removing large-scale, feasible private investment projects to put into operation, avoiding waste of social resources. Specifically, it is necessary to completely resolve the public investment projects out of a total of 571 pending projects that are still stuck in compensation, site clearance, planning, and land procedures.

While monitoring and urging the progress of the implementation of the conclusions and directions of the Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, we continue to organize working delegations of the city government leaders to work with departments, branches and localities to directly remove difficulties and obstacles. Including strengthening the inspection of administrative procedures (unscheduled) at departments, branches, management boards of industrial parks, export processing zones, high-tech parks and localities.

Regarding the medium-term orientation in the context of Ho Chi Minh City's expansion, the issue of proactively studying the development space is the focus. In the immediate future, it is necessary to review and plan to prepare for investment in traffic routes connecting with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau into a synchronous and seamless system when the new city is formed in September. Traffic not only plays the role of a blood vessel, but also a driving force for socio-economic development when the high growth target is being prioritized by Ho Chi Minh City leaders.

All of these create a "push" for May, proactively removing obstacles and speeding up projects; taking drastic and decisive actions to create products to serve society and people.

NGUYEN QUAN CAT

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/thang-5-va-hanh-dong-quyet-liet-post794211.html