Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen said that the city will develop strongly if it thoroughly solves the bottlenecks in the three areas of “institutions – infrastructure – human resources”.
The year of 2022 is time when the central government has shown its determination to adjust the mechanism for Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) with important strategic and foundational resolutions (such as Resolution No. 31 of the Politburo on development orientations and tasks of HCMC to 2030, with a vision to 2045, Politburo’s Resolution on socio-economic development and assurance of national defense and security in the Southeast region to 2030, with a vision to 2045, the Resolution replaced Resolution No. 54 on the specific mechanism for HCMC which will be submitted to the National Assembly in the upcoming session…). In 2023, the implementation which will be started soon, includes promoting many issues of decentralization in the organization of the urban government apparatus; financial institutions will be piloted, especially the International Financial Center of HCMC…
The city’s proactive role in advising, proposing and ensuring the effectiveness of implementation must be highly promoted. The long-standing bottleneck is the role of guiding, coordinating and handling from central ministries and agencies, which has been set out by resolution documents into a focus to be solved and the head of the Government also requested “do not abdicate responsibility”. If the above political commitments are put into practice, this will be a great opportunity for HCMC to unleash its internal resources and strongly develop from 2023 onward.
Also in the last month of 2022, HCMC has rushed to start construction of key national transport infrastructure projects, notably the T3 terminal, which connects to the Tan Son Nhat international airport cluster. T3 terminal will raise TSN airport’s service capacity to 50 million passengers/year from 28 million passengers/year at present. The bottleneck in land conversion, land valuation and compensation in this project area has been “clogged” for many years. Only when Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh directly worked and directed, the matter was removed step by step.
Previously, the National Assembly also approved a resolution on investment guideline of the Ring Road 3 project in HCMC with the largest total investment in the southern region ever of 75,378 billion VND. In fact, the ring road plan was approved for more than a decade, but only when the Covid-19 pandemic led to big consequences and the vital imperatives of an entire southern economic region, the Ring Road 3 project is really funded.
This road is not only the solution to the problem of urban traffic (especially HCMC), inter-regional traffic (HCMC – Dong Nai – Binh Duong – Long An), create a launch pad for sustainable development for each locality in the overall internal balance for the whole region; but also establish fairness in the development investment strategy of the national key regions.
This arterial road connecting the two regions of the East – Southwest region will ensure its belt nature because it run from the Tan Van intersection (the gateway of the two provinces of Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Thu Duc City – HCMC) to Ben Luc – Long Thanh expressway, to HCMC – Trung Luong expressway; If you turn to Cu Chi direction, the Ring Road 3 will continue with the HCMC – Moc Bai highway (Tay Ninh – preparing to build), towards Long An, it will connect to the intersection of Ben Luc – Long Thanh expressway – HCMC – Trung Luong, creating a closed circulation.
In the context of the wave of shifting production chains out of China caused by short-term reason of the consequences of the government’s prolonged zero-covid policy – and long-term reason of the increasingly acrimonious trade between the US and China, Vietnam is one of the seven countries that are best positioned to receive investment shifts away from China under the US “friendshoring” strategy (moving production lines from China to other friendly and trustworthy countries for the US).
With a focus on globalization and attracting friendly partners, the US and its allies are looking at potential “strategic partners” for the US-led strategy of reshaping global supply chains through US-led global supply chains through its allies – based on their commercial complementarity and without tensions with the US and EU; as well as their ability to compete with China on global value chains and traditional trade.
This strategic shift is a dream opportunity for Vietnam in general, and HCMC in particular in two ways as a production market and as a consumption market.
Catching up with the above “gold” opportunities also increases the quality of human resources for the city’s labor market. According to Resolution No. 31, it is time to consider an alternative model of “traditional” export processing zones, industrial parks, and technological zones that have completed their “historic mission” in the past 30 years, to adapt to the needs of the global market with high technology – high technique, less labor intensive, less demanding of large land fund. In order to have high-quality human resources, the top task is training and the quality and effectiveness of training must be basic priority.
Also from the third quarter of 2022, Chairman of the City People’s Committee Phan Van Mai, who is also the Chairman of the Council of Rectors of Universities in Ho Chi Minh City (with 51 universities) has requested to train a large number of knowledgeable and skilled workers to supply foreign investors as well as domestic enterprises. Specifically, the “big players” in the technology field such as Intel, Samsung, Nidec and the trend of FDI restructuring in the post-pandemic period have chosen Ho Chi Minh City as a production and distribution market.
