At the opening session of the 1st Ho Chi Minh City Party Congress, term 2025-2030, which took place on the morning of October 14, General Secretary To Lam gave directions and orientations on the implementation of the Resolution for the 2020-2025 term and directions and tasks for the 2025-2030 term.
Dan Tri Newspaper respectfully introduces the full text of the speech by General Secretary To Lam at the opening session of the 1st Ho Chi Minh City Party Congress.
Dear leaders and former leaders of the Party, State and Vietnam Fatherland Front.
Dear Presidium of the Congress,
Dear delegates and comrades,
Today, in the city named after Uncle Ho, where the quintessence of the country harmonizes, where three poles of dynamic development converge, where many innovative initiatives and aspirations for advancement originate, we solemnly hold the opening ceremony of the 1st Congress of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee. This is not only the beginning of a new chapter for the city after the merger, but also an important milestone opening up a great vision for the country in a new era - an era of growth, creativity, prosperity, civilization and happiness.
Opening session of the 1st Ho Chi Minh City Party Congress, term 2025-2030 (Photo: Organizing Committee).
On behalf of the Politburo and the Secretariat, I would like to send to the veteran revolutionaries, the Heroic Vietnamese Mothers, Heroes of the People's Armed Forces, Heroes of Labor, leaders of Ho Chi Minh City and the two provinces of Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau of different periods, and 546 delegates representing more than 366,000 Party members of the Party Committee attending the Congress. Through you, I would like to send to all cadres, Party members, people and soldiers of Ho Chi Minh City my warmest regards and best wishes. Wishing the Congress great success.
Dear comrades,
Implementing Directive 45 of the Politburo, the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee has led and directed the successful organization of Party congresses at all levels, preparing for the 1st City Party Congress, moving towards the 14th National Congress of the Party with a serious and open-minded spirit. The Congress documents have looked straight at the truth, correctly assessed the truth, closely followed the orientation of the documents submitted to the 14th Party Congress, clearly defined the goals, tasks, and solutions for the 2025-2030 period with a breakthrough and strategic nature; fully absorbed the opinions of the subordinate Party committees and all walks of life, especially the comments of the Politburo members, the Secretariat, the Central Committees, ministries, and branches.
The document presented to the Congress today is the crystallization of the wisdom of the entire Party Committee, government and people of the city. On behalf of the Politburo, I warmly welcome and highly appreciate the preparations for the Congress by the City Party Committee.
Dear comrades,
During the 40 years of renovation, especially in the 5 years of implementing the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress and the Resolution of the Party Congress of the three localities before the merger, the Politburo and the Secretariat highly appreciated the spirit of solidarity, will and efforts to overcome difficulties of the Party Committee, government and people of the city. The work of building and rectifying the Party and the political system has been persistently and resolutely led, directed and organized, achieving many substantial results, becoming a key factor ensuring the stability and development of the city.
The work of political ideology and revolutionary ethics education, and the building of "Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space" are being carried out synchronously throughout the political system, so that each party member, cadre, civil servant, and public employee can keep in mind to live and work with integrity, pushing back the pragmatic, opportunistic, and profiteering lifestyle, especially the evils of bureaucracy, distance from the people, and indifference.
Despite facing unprecedented challenges, from global fluctuations, the Covid-19 pandemic to internal difficulties and personnel fluctuations, the city has still steadfastly overcome, proactively innovated, recovered and developed. With many unprecedented solutions, the city has mobilized the combined strength of the political system and the entire population, controlled and repelled the pandemic, restored production, maintained supply chains, restored key industries and services and regained growth momentum.
The city's economy has recovered rapidly from a sharp decline and developed steadily on the basis of renewing the growth model, restructuring, promoting the application of science and technology, and innovation, creating a solid foundation for a new development stage.
General Secretary To Lam delivered a speech at the opening session of the 1st Ho Chi Minh City Party Congress (Photo: Organizing Committee).
Currently, the city's economic scale after the merger has reached 123 billion USD, accounting for 23.5% of the country's GDP, comparable to many large cities in the region. GRDP per capita is more than 8,900 USD, 1.7 times higher than the national average; growth quality and labor productivity are constantly improving; digital economy is increasingly becoming an important driving force, contributing over 25% of GRDP, spreading strongly to the fields of finance, trade, health, education, and culture.
The city is also a leader in the country in green transformation, smart urban development and attracting high-tech investment, forming the Thu Thiem International Financial Center, creating a foundation for the development of a knowledge-based, innovative economy and deep integration with the world. Budget revenue accounts for more than 1/3 of the total national revenue, affirming the city's important role in fiscal stability and national growth, while opening up the prospect of becoming an economic center of Southeast Asia in the next decade.
The potentials and strengths of each locality before the merger were strategically re-planned, ensuring complementarity and diffusion, creating a unified and effective development space. Thanks to that, Ho Chi Minh City after the merger continues to affirm its role as the largest economic, financial, industrial and service center in the country, and at the same time has the opportunity to become an emerging megacity of the region, leading development not only by scale and growth rate but also by institutional quality, governance efficiency and sustainable, inclusive and innovative development model.
Strategic breakthroughs in infrastructure, digital transformation, science and technology and high-quality human resources have been focused on promoting, achieving many important results, especially the development of increasingly synchronous transport, technical, urban and rural infrastructure; the ecosystem of logistics, finance, trade, services, and high-end tourism has been gradually formed, connecting with Cai Mep - Thi Vai international seaport, Long Thanh airport, Thu Thiem financial center,... making the city become a gateway for international integration and a center for connecting the value chain of the region.
General Secretary To Lam congratulated Mr. Tran Luu Quang on being appointed by the Politburo as Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee for the 2025-2030 term (Photo: Organizing Committee).
The viewpoint of cultural and social development in harmony with economic development is increasingly deeply recognized and consistently demonstrated in leadership and management practices. The city focuses on sustainable social development, ensuring progress, social justice, social security, human security, health care, stature, longevity, and quality of life of the people. Education and training are comprehensively developed, approaching regional and international levels, with many breakthrough mechanisms and policies in education. Taking care of policy families, meritorious people, improving the effectiveness of social security and protection. These results contribute to improving the human development index (HDI), building the prosperity and happiness index (WBI) and consolidating the system of cultural values - the people of Ho Chi Minh City are civilized, affectionate, creative and humane, creating a spiritual foundation for the new development stage.
The national defense and security potential, the national defense posture, the people's security posture, the defense zones of the province and city are increasingly consolidated and strengthened, firmly protecting the airspace, sea, islands, inland, key targets and projects; effectively responding to traditional and non-traditional security challenges, especially cyber security, economic security, energy security and human security; strongly fighting and reducing all types of crime, especially street crime, protecting the peaceful life of the people, enhancing the image of a safe and friendly city. The city's Army and Police forces are being built to be increasingly standardized, professional, elite, and gradually modernized, improving their combat, management, forecasting, and quick response capabilities to all situations.
In particular, the city's apparatus has been streamlined, associated with the construction of a two-level local government, strongly changing the style, manner, and service attitude, applying digital transformation, towards a serving government, close to the people, effective and transparent. The arrangement and merger of administrative units have been seriously implemented, creating a foundation for a streamlined, strong, effective and efficient apparatus.
The great achievements of the city in the past term are the result of the close leadership and direction of the Central Government, the effective coordination of ministries, departments, branches and localities, but the decisive factor is still the internal strength of the Party Committee and the people of Ho Chi Minh City. The city proactively summarized the practice, proposed the Central Government to issue many specific mechanisms and policies, especially Resolution No. 98 of the National Assembly and the Central Government's conclusions on the International Financial Center, the urban railway system, in order to effectively exploit all resources for development.
These results are very valuable and proud, contributing to the implementation of the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress, and at the same time being a solid premise for the city to continue to develop rapidly, sustainably and comprehensively in the new era. On behalf of the Party and State leaders, once again, I warmly congratulate and commend the great efforts, dedication, creativity and outstanding achievements that the Party Committee, government, army and people of Ho Chi Minh City have achieved in the past 5 years, worthy of the trust and great expectations of the Central Government and the people of the whole country.
Panoramic view of the space where the first Ho Chi Minh City Party Congress took place (Photo: Organizing Committee).
Dear comrades,
In addition to the achievements, the City Party Committee has frankly acknowledged that there are still many difficulties, limitations, and weaknesses, first of all, structural bottlenecks that make growth unsustainable. Although strategic breakthroughs have made important progress, they are not yet synchronized and do not meet the high requirements for developing inter-regional transport infrastructure, digital infrastructure, science and technology, and logistics. Public investment is scattered, ineffective, with overlapping procedures, slow disbursement, and many problems.
Science, technology and innovation have not really become the main driving force of industrialization and modernization. They have not mastered high technology, core technology and source technology in key economic sectors and have not attracted international talent in key areas. Training and development of human resources, especially high-quality human resources, have not yet met the requirements of international integration and competition.
Urban planning, management and development still have many shortcomings, lack long-term vision, and have not kept up with the speed of urbanization, population growth and the impact of climate change, causing many urgent problems such as flooding, environmental pollution, traffic congestion, social housing, hospitals, schools and the social welfare system to not be fundamentally resolved...
I propose that the Congress focus on frank discussions, more in-depth assessment of limitations and weaknesses, analysis of causes and proposal of practical and feasible solutions.
Dear comrades,
The merger of Ho Chi Minh City with the two provinces of Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau is a historic turning point, where the three most dynamic economic poles of the country converge. The Party Central Committee, the National Assembly, the Government and the people of the whole country have high expectations that the new city will become a model "super city", forming new growth drivers, reaching the level of international cities, developing smartly, modernly, with green and sustainable growth, worthy of being the leading economic, financial, scientific and technological, cultural and innovation center of Vietnam.
The Political Report presented to the Congress thoroughly grasped the spirit of innovation, development aspirations and pioneering responsibility of Ho Chi Minh City, identifying the key goal of building a truly clean, strong and comprehensive Party and political system; firmly ensuring national defense, security, foreign affairs and integration. Mobilizing all resources, effectively exploiting potentials, advantages, strategic positions, creating breakthroughs in institutions, science and technology, innovation and high-quality human resources, promoting rapid and sustainable socio-economic development, becoming a civilized and modern city, leading the country in the cause of industrialization and modernization and rising to a prominent position in the Southeast Asian region, an attractive global destination with a unique knowledge-based and creative economy, harmonious and humane culture and society, high quality of life, green environment, safety, livability, belonging to the group of 100 cities with the world's leading competitiveness, happiness and sustainability.
Regarding the direction, tasks and solutions for the 2025-2030 period, the comrades mentioned in the Document are complete and specific, covering the key issues that the Politburo and the Secretariat have commented on. I express my high agreement and would like to emphasize only 6 issues that need attention in the process of leadership, direction and implementation:
Firstly, promoting the results of the 2020-2025 term, building the City Party Committee to truly become a center of intelligence, solidarity and innovation, an exemplary Party Committee with sufficient political mettle, governance capacity and vision, capable of leading the city to pioneer development and integration, worthy of the honor of being named after President Ho Chi Minh. Strengthening Party building and rectification and further improving the leadership capacity and fighting strength of the Party Committee. Focusing on building a two-level government that is streamlined, strong, smart, efficient, effective, and efficient, serving the people.
In particular, it is necessary to pay attention to building a team of leaders, especially strategic and key cadres, and leaders at all levels, considering this a strategic breakthrough of the strategy. That team must have strong political will, integrity, strategic thinking, good expertise, outstanding leadership and management skills, the ability to work in an international environment and the ability to solve complex problems. They must be a new generation of leaders, daring to think, daring to do, daring to take responsibility and the spirit of serving the people.
Second, to realize the vision and development goals of the new period, Ho Chi Minh City needs to thoroughly grasp, concretize and creatively apply the major policies and guidelines of the Party and State, turn guidelines into actions, resolutions into concrete results, create institutional breakthroughs, innovate the growth model and improve the quality of urban governance. The city must put the spirit of the Politburo's strategic resolutions into the practice of special urban development.
For example, Resolution No. 57 is the guideline to build Ho Chi Minh City into an innovation center, the core of the knowledge economy, accelerate the digital economy, digital government and digital society, and form a startup ecosystem, high technology, and digital finance. Resolution No. 59 directs the expansion of proactive international integration, upgrading the financial, logistics, trade, and tourism center associated with regional linkages and connections with global centers.
In particular, the city needs to apply Resolution No. 66 to perfect the institution, boldly pilot the model of autonomous urban government, decentralization, flexible delegation of authority, towards modern, transparent and effective governance. Similarly, in the spirit of Resolution No. 68, the city is required to arouse and protect the entrepreneurial spirit, develop the private economy, promote large private corporations, technology enterprises, and innovative startups to become the most important driving force of the city's economy and Resolution No. 70 on ensuring energy security for a megacity, a digital economic center of the region.
Over the years, the city has always been a pole of growth, a pole of innovation and creativity, leading the country. Many policies and guidelines of the Party and State have been effectively implemented, and have been researched and directed by the Central Government to be implemented nationwide; hoping that the city will continue to promote its tradition and regain its position.
Third, it is necessary to affirm the role of the subject and the central position of the people in all policies and actions of the Party Committee and the city government. The happiness, satisfaction and trust of the people are the highest measure of the leadership effectiveness and governance capacity of the political system. Deeply practice socialist democracy, ensure the people's right to know, to discuss, to do, to check and to enjoy; at the same time, promote the strength of great national unity, arouse the pride, tradition of patriotism, the will of self-reliance, self-improvement, revolutionary spirit, innovation and creativity of the heroic people of Ho Chi Minh City.
The 1st Congress of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee announced the Politburo's decisions on appointing new city personnel (Photo: Organizing Committee).
Fourth, to build and develop Ho Chi Minh City into a leading economic, financial, technological and service center in Southeast Asia and Asia, a major hub for international logistics and smart, modern and sustainable development, the most important task is to complete the planning, re-architect the development space according to the multi-polar - integrated - connected thinking, operate according to the multi-center governance model to reasonably allocate resources and improve operational efficiency. This is a new issue, of decisive significance, the slower the city is, the more it loses the opportunity to develop.
The city needs to accelerate economic restructuring, taking science, technology and innovation as the main driving force; promote digital transformation, green transformation in a practical and effective manner, improve labor productivity, and be determined to achieve a high GRDP growth rate in the 2025-2030 period. In particular, it is necessary to build a modern urban governance model, apply digital technology in management, operation and public services, towards a creative, transparent and effective digital government, as the foundation for a smart city.
The remaining problems of the city are very worrying. At this Congress, the City Party Committee needs to discuss thoroughly and resolve to overcome the problems of traffic congestion, flooding due to increasingly complex climate change, air pollution and build a civilized city without drugs. The Government will always accompany the city to effectively solve these problems.
Fifth, it is necessary to firmly maintain the goal of comprehensive human development, linking economic growth with social progress and equity, building a livable city where every citizen has the opportunity to develop, receive care for health, education, living environment and safety, and no one is left behind. Continue to fundamentally and comprehensively innovate education and training, create breakthroughs in high-quality human resources, meeting the requirements of the era of knowledge economy and international integration as set out in Resolution No. 71.
At the same time, strengthen education on revolutionary ideals, ethics, and lifestyle, arouse patriotism, self-reliance, and the desire to contribute, and foster the spirit of innovation, creativity, and social responsibility, especially among the young generation.
Effectively implement the universal health care program, develop sustainable population, associated with building a modern health system, applying high technology in the spirit of Resolution No. 72. At the same time, build the culture and human values of a civilized, modern, affectionate city, imbued with national traditions and humanity, taking "Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space" as a symbol to spread Vietnamese values, bravery and humanity.
Development in the new era is not only measured by economic growth but also by the quality of life, prosperity and happiness of the people, and these indicators need to be quantified.
Sixth, it is necessary to strengthen national defense and security potential, build a national defense posture associated with a strong people's security posture, proactively and effectively respond to traditional and non-traditional security challenges. Regularly grasp the situation, promptly detect, combat, and neutralize all plots and sabotage activities; improve the effectiveness of the "All people protect national security" movement, prevent and reduce crime, build a secure, safe, fair and happy society for all people, and create a stable and favorable environment for development.
Dear comrades,
In addition to deciding on the direction, goals and tasks for the city's development in the 2025-2030 period, our Congress also has the important political task of contributing ideas to the draft documents of the 14th National Party Congress. I hope that, with a sense of responsibility, collective intelligence and a tradition of innovation and dynamism, the Congress will democratically discuss and contribute many profound, practical and strategic ideas to the Central Committee.
After the Congress, it is recommended that the new City Party Executive Committee urgently complete documents, resolutions, action programs, develop working regulations, issue a work program for the entire term, and at the same time organize propaganda and disseminate widely among cadres, party members and people, turning the spirit of the Congress Resolution into concrete actions, creating new momentum, confidence and new motivation for the development of Ho Chi Minh City in the new period.
The Congress is not only a political event of the Party but also a general mobilization of the intelligence, creativity and aspirations of the entire Party Committee, government and people of the city in the new era. With the vision, aspiration and tradition of solidarity, dynamism, creativity, daring to think and dare to do, I deeply believe that the city will rise strongly, realizing the goal of building and developing Ho Chi Minh City into a prosperous, prosperous, economically, culturally and socially developed city with a high quality of life, a center of innovation, deep international integration, making a worthy contribution to the cause of building and protecting the socialist Vietnamese Fatherland, a rich, civilized and happy country.
I wish all delegates good health and success in completing assigned tasks.
Thank you very much.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/thoi-su/toan-van-phat-bieu-chi-dao-cua-tong-bi-thu-to-lam-tai-dai-hoi-dang-bo-tphcm-20251014123526213.htm
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