Logistics and seaports are the service industries that Ho Chi Minh City will focus on investing in. Photo: VNA

Great potential for development

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Statistics Office, over the past 10 years, the service industry has always contributed a high proportion, over 60% of the total product in the area. In 2023, the 9 main service industries alone contributed 59.6% of GRDP (total product in the area), accounting for 90% of the service sector.

Data for the first 6 months of 2024 shows that, in the overall growth rate, the trade and service sector contributed the most, 4.34 percentage points, and had the highest growth rate of 7.26%. Considering the contribution ratio of 9 key service sectors to GRDP growth, the added value of these 9 sectors accounted for 59.9% of GRDP and 91.3% of the service sector. Specifically, 4/9 sectors had high growth ratios and accounted for 63.1% within the service sector, including trade (16.4%), transportation and warehousing (10.5%), finance and banking (9.1%), professional activities, science and technology (5.4%).

With such important contributions, it shows that the service industry of Ho Chi Minh City has made breakthroughs, continuously increasing year by year. Ho Chi Minh City is increasingly affirming its position as the largest and most diverse service center in the country.

According to Mr. Nguyen Van Dung, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, Ho Chi Minh City identifies service as an important industry contributing to the overall development of the city. In recent times, Ho Chi Minh City has proposed many programs to promote the development of the service industry such as: implementing the projects "Orientation for developing Ho Chi Minh City's service infrastructure in the period of 2020 - 2025, towards 2040"; the project "Developing the logistics industry to 2025, towards 2030"; building an international financial center in Ho Chi Minh City...

Notably, the development of the Project “Building Ho Chi Minh City to become a major service center of the country and the region with high-class, modern and high-value-added service industries” (referred to as the Project) is an urgent requirement to help the city continue to have solutions to overcome difficulties and problems and create momentum for future breakthroughs according to the orientations and visions of Ho Chi Minh City’s economic development and the service industry,” Mr. Nguyen Van Dung said.

Remove barriers, create breakthroughs

Sharing about the Project, Mr. Bui Ta Hoang Vu, Director of the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City, said that through research and analysis, Ho Chi Minh City has all the necessary and sufficient conditions to develop into a major service center of the country and the region. Exploiting the city's development potential, especially high-quality service industries that bring added value, will create a stronger driving force to promote socio-economic development for the whole Southeast region and the whole country.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Dung, Deputy General Director of Vietnam Commodity Exchange Joint Stock Company, said that if Ho Chi Minh City establishes a commodity exchange, it will contribute to solving the problem of standardizing commodity products at the highest level. This is also a modern method with transaction deposits as a guarantee for obligations in the purchase and sale of goods, helping to develop healthy domestic and international commodity trade relations. Promote an efficient and transparent market, healthy competition...

According to experts, although the service industry of Ho Chi Minh City plays a very important role, its development is not yet commensurate with its potential and position and still contains many unsustainable factors.

Dr. Nguyen Hoai Nam, Director of the Economic Law Program, Hoa Sen University, said that barriers arising from legal regulations are increasing production costs and consuming resources of service industry enterprises. In recent times, the State has had strong reforms in favorable business conditions and business regulations for the service sector in the whole country and Ho Chi Minh City, but they have not yet met expectations. Many regulations on service business conditions are still unreasonable. In order to create a favorable business environment for the service sector in Ho Chi Minh City, it is necessary to quickly remove bottlenecks and legal barriers that are hindering business investment activities.

On the other hand, according to Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association (HUBA), in the new context, the development strategy does not stop at each individual industry but all service industries must be based on innovation. Therefore, it is necessary to put the information technology, post and telecommunications and innovation industries at the forefront, with a more breakthrough mechanism to develop this industry so that the remaining industries can develop accordingly.

In addition, in terms of training, experts say that Ho Chi Minh City needs to plan human resource development and order digital human resource training facilities for priority occupations related to the digital economy. About 18% of total employment in key service enterprises can participate in trade. Therefore, the training focus needs to be renewed in the direction of enhancing workers' skills (especially digital skills) and the capacity of enterprises as well as managers. Ho Chi Minh City needs to answer questions about training promotion policies, implementing units and resources as well as solutions to encourage cooperation between training and labor using units.