Creating new growth momentum for Ho Chi Minh City
On the morning of May 14, New Energy Magazine/PetroTimes organized a seminar "Ho Chi Minh City: Rise from Industry - Energy - High-Tech Services" in Hanoi. Sharing at the seminar, experts said that in order for Ho Chi Minh City to achieve the goal of becoming a multi-center megacity, the leading financial - technology - logistics smart center in Southeast Asia, the city needs to create institutional breakthroughs, promote the role of leading enterprises and build a synchronous development linkage ecosystem.
According to Dr. Tran Quang Thang - Director of the Institute of Economics and Management of Ho Chi Minh City - assessed that Ho Chi Minh City wants to achieve the above goal, it must innovate the growth model in the direction of relying on three main drivers including finance, technology and smart logistics; and at the same time expand the development space structure and strengthen regional linkages.
To achieve this, the city needs a breakthrough institution, creating conditions for more effective development. In parallel, it is necessary to build a modern governance model and prioritize outstanding investment in high-quality human resources. "Ho Chi Minh City is currently very strongly decentralized. After the merger, the city has 168 wards, communes, and special zones and is testing many decentralized and strongly autonomous models for development policies," he said.
Dr. Tran Quang Thang said that the most important factor is still institutions. Mechanisms and policies must be wide enough for the city, wards, communes, and special zones to have development space; and at the same time clarify regional linkages to form a common development ecosystem of the Southeast region. "Institutional reform is decisive to create breakthroughs and facilitate development. If reform is slow, it will directly affect the growth rate of Ho Chi Minh City as well as the common development goals of the nation," he emphasized.
In addition, regional linkage infrastructure needs to be prioritized to accelerate progress. Digital economy and innovation must become strong growth drivers and need to be invested more heavily. At the same time, the training of high-quality human resources also needs to be given special attention to meet the new development requirements of the city.
Leading enterprise plays a leading role
From the perspective of businesses and the innovation ecosystem, according to Ms. Le Nguyen Thien Nga - Director of the Institute for Policy Management and Development Strategy, for Ho Chi Minh City to create a two-digit growth momentum in the coming period, it needs to converge three very important factors including appropriate mechanisms, leading businesses and high-quality human resources.
The role of a leading enterprise is very important, because when a large corporation takes the lead in the market, it will drag the entire ecosystem to develop together, from supporting industries, technical services to human resource training and technology transfer," Ms. Nga said.
She said that in the process of working with Ho Chi Minh City on supporting industry development, many programs have been implemented to promote domestic enterprises to participate more deeply in the international supply chain. However, to create strong development, large corporations with sufficient capacity to play a core role are still needed.
If a large Vietnamese corporation stands out to lead large-scale projects in the fields of industry, energy or technology, it will create a very strong spillover effect, while attracting more satellite businesses, international experts and high-tech resources to participate.
She also emphasized the role of the team of experts and said that Vietnam currently has many good experts at home and abroad, but there needs to be a mechanism to gather, connect, share experiences and effectively exploit this intellectual resource.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nguyen Duc Kien - former Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Economic Committee (now the Economic - Finance Committee) said that in order for leading enterprises to continue to promote their role and capacity in the field of high-tech services and participate more deeply in the city's new energy industry chain, Ho Chi Minh City needs to recognize large enterprises as equal development partners.
The government and businesses are not a'superior - subordinate' relationship, but two entities accompanying each other for the common goal of development," he said.
Dr. Nguyen Duc Kien also mentioned the very large source of marine, coastal and offshore data that Petrovietnam owns after many years of operating in the oil and gas and energy sectors. According to him, this is a strategic data resource for the development of new energy industries, marine economy and offshore infrastructure.
