On the morning of February 28, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Van Duoc chaired a meeting to assess the socio-economic situation in February and deploy tasks for March 2025.
At the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Van Duoc emphasized that the target of growth of gross regional domestic product (GRDP) over 10% this year is a big challenge, requiring comprehensive efforts from departments, branches, businesses and people.
The Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee stated that in recent times, the city has continued to maintain a comprehensive development momentum, playing a leading role in the country's economy.
However, there are still many difficulties, especially in infrastructure, bottlenecks attracting investment, as well as the rate of dissolved and inactive enterprises increasing compared to the previous month.
According to Mr. Nguyen Van Duoc, 2025 is a year of special significance when Ho Chi Minh City must both promote economic growth and ensure the organization of the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day (April 30, 1975 - April 30, 2025) and prepare for Party Congresses at all levels.
At the same time, the city is also implementing the arrangement and streamlining of the administrative apparatus. These tasks create a lot of pressure, requiring high determination and breakthrough solutions.
To achieve the double-digit growth target, Mr. Nguyen Van Duoc suggested that the top priority be infrastructure development, solving bottlenecks in attracting investment, and creating favorable conditions for businesses to expand production and business.
The city also aims to improve the investment environment, support businesses in accessing capital and expanding the market. At the same time, speed up the disbursement of public investment capital, especially key projects to create growth momentum.
Despite many challenges, Ho Chi Minh City's economic picture in the first two months of 2025 still recorded many positive signals. Total retail sales of goods and consumer service revenue is estimated at VND 212,721 billion, up 15.9% over the same period last year.
Export turnover reached 7.86 billion USD, up 19.17% over the same period (the same period last year increased by 11.6%).
The tourism industry also had a strong breakthrough with total revenue reaching VND37,417 billion, up 30.2% over the same period. The city welcomed more than 1 million international visitors (up 15.7%) and nearly 5.6 million domestic visitors (up 8.3%).
The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) in the first two months of the year increased by 6.09% over the same period (the previous year increased by 4.3%). Total state budget revenue reached VND 108,799 billion, equal to 20.92% of the annual estimate and increasing by 7.1% over the same period in 2024.
Ho Chi Minh City attracted about 365.79 million USD in foreign investment capital, an increase of 87.1% over the same period.
One of the major challenges for Ho Chi Minh City at present is the disbursement of public investment capital. The city has assigned and allocated a detailed public investment capital plan for 2025 with a total amount of VND84,149 billion. Of which, the central budget capital is VND 3,237 billion, local budget capital is VND 64,158 billion and local budget reserves are VND 16,753 billion.
However, as of February 21, the total public investment plan for 2025 has only disbursed VND1,802 billion, reaching only 2.1% of the plan.
This slow progress requires the city to have solutions to remove obstacles and speed up the implementation of projects, especially important traffic works and infrastructure.
