Improving competitiveness and resilience for businesses
According to the Private Sector Performance Index (BPI) ranking in 2025 announced by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ho Chi Minh City ranks first in the country with 5.67 points, ranked above Hanoi and Quang Ninh.
Looking at the development reality of the Ho Chi Minh City private enterprise sector, Mr. Tran Viet Anh - General Director of Nam Thai Son Joint Stock Company said that the city has a tradition of strong private economic development, with high adaptability and creativity.
According to Mr. Viet Anh, throughout the difficult period, private enterprises still flexibly created new products, searched for markets, and transformed models and industries to maintain operations. However, this development is mostly spontaneous; the number of businesses is increasing rapidly, but the number of businesses leaving the market is also not small.
The big problem today is not only the number of businesses, but how to make businesses "grow up", improve competitiveness and resilience. In addition, this sector also faces many bottlenecks in labor productivity, human resource training, access to capital and management capacity in the context of digital transformation, AI, and green economy.
With a scale of only a few dozen workers, it is very difficult for them to self-transform digitally without support from the State" - Mr. Viet Anh assessed.
Need to expand the capital market
From the perspective of the business community, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoa - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association said that Ho Chi Minh City businesses are currently very willing to promote growth for themselves and contribute to overall growth. However, businesses want to have more strong companionship from the State.
Ho Chi Minh City currently has many important premises such as Resolution 68 on private economic development, orientations for building the International Financial Center (IFC) or implementing Resolution 57 on science and technology. The remaining issue is how to make small and medium-sized enterprises truly access these drivers.
In addition, the capital problem continues to be a major challenge for small and medium enterprises.
He said that the construction of the International Financial Center needs to be accompanied by a strong enough mechanism to help businesses mobilize capital from the capital market instead of being too dependent on banks. This is a particularly important factor in the context that many large infrastructure projects such as urban railways or expressways are being implemented and require very large capital sources.
If large enterprises continue to attract capital from the banking credit system, the capital space for small and medium-sized enterprises will gradually shrink" - Mr. Hoa said.
Dr. Can Van Luc - Member of the National Monetary and Financial Policy Advisory Council - assessed that Ho Chi Minh City's leading position in the country in the private economic efficiency index clearly reflects the competitiveness as well as the dynamic private economic development environment of the city. The fact that Ho Chi Minh City has drastically removed difficulties for many real estate, construction, public investment projects... not only improves the efficiency of resource use, limits waste but also strengthens the trust of the business community and people.
However, the expert said that Vietnamese businesses still face many challenges. Therefore, businesses need to proactively restructure their finances, improve labor productivity and soon adapt to the standards of the global digital economy to effectively utilize new preferential mechanisms and policies.
