Ho Chi Minh City is exerting more efforts to complete the 2019 socio-economic development goals, heard a meeting of the municipal Party Committee on October 2.

A corner of dynamic Ho Chi Minh City 

Politburo member Nguyen Thien Nhan, Secretary of the municipal Party Committee, chaired the 32nd meeting of the 10th-tenure municipal Party Committee.

Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Tran Vinh Tuyen reported that the city’s economy continued growing in the first nine months of 2019 with the gross regional domestic product (GRDP) estimated at over 1 trillion VND (43.1 million USD), up 7.81 percent.

In January-September, the State budget collection proved effective, surpassing 287 trillion VND, up 7.23 percent, fulfilling 71.9 percent of the yearly projection. The total retail sales of goods and services rose by 11.9 percent over the same period last year. The export turnover exceeded 31 billion USD, a yearly rise of 10.5 percent.

During the period under review, the city welcomed over 6.2 million foreign tourists, up 14.3 percent year-on-year. It drew 5.43 billion USD of foreign investment, a year-on-year increase of 3.48 percent.

The positive results were attributed to local efforts in removing difficulties for investors and speeding up the implementation of projects.

Local authorities also visited businesses to collect their opinions to improve investment environment, business production, and competitiveness as well as address public matters.

According to Tuyen, the city proactively coordinated with ministries to unlock bottlenecks in the implementation of key projects.

So far this year, it has held 10 international workshops and conferences on various fields such as artificial intelligence, schemes to develop trees, parks, public lighting, human resources training, and smart tourism.

The city is also focusing on administrative reform and striving to build itself into a smart urban area.