Exactly half a century ago, on July 2, 1976, the National Assembly passed a resolution officially naming Saigon - Gia Dinh City Ho Chi Minh City.
According to the Organizing Committee of the anniversary, the past 50 years have been a journey full of efforts of the Party Committee, government and people of Ho Chi Minh City to overcome difficulties, affirming the leading economic role of the whole country.
In the first 10 years after reunification (1975 - 1985), the city focused on political stability, production recovery, and gradually healing the consequences of war.
The turning point came from the Doi Moi (Renovation) in 1986, when Ho Chi Minh City became a pioneer in experimenting with many new mechanisms and policies, contributing to the formation and completion of the socialist-oriented market economy development guidelines.
Thanks to creative approaches, the city's economy continuously maintained high growth rates in many periods. The period 1991 - 1995 reached 12.6%; the period 1996 - 2000 reached 10.1%; the period 2001 - 2005 reached 11%; the period 2006 - 2010 reached 11.4%.
In the period 2011 - 2020, despite shifting to in-depth development, GRDP still increased by an average of 6.86% per year, higher than the general growth rate of the whole country.
By 2020, the city's economic scale will increase 2.7 times compared to 2010, while per capita income will increase 2.39 times.
The growth model is also gradually shifting to development based on science and technology, innovation, focusing on high-quality service industries, high-tech industry and technology-applied agriculture.
2025 is identified as a special milestone when Ho Chi Minh City completes the merger with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau, and at the same time deploys a two-level local government model.
After the merger, the city continued to maintain positive growth momentum with GRDP reaching 7.53%; GRDP per capita reaching 8,755 USD; total budget revenue reaching more than 800,043 billion VND, equal to 119.1% of the estimate.
After 50 years, Ho Chi Minh City has made its mark with a strong urbanization process, gradually completing planning, developing industrial parks, export processing zones and modern transport infrastructure systems such as ring roads, metro, elevated roads and new urban areas.
The city also synchronously implements urban embellishment programs, relocating houses on and along canals and ditches, developing social housing, worker dormitories, and student dormitories, contributing to improving the quality of life of people.
In the coming time, Ho Chi Minh City will continue to complete the overall plan according to the new development space after the merger, invest in synchronous infrastructure, promote digital transformation and focus on solving problems of traffic, flooding, and environmental pollution.
Ho Chi Minh City always focuses on ensuring social security through sustainable poverty reduction programs, caring for people with meritorious services, poor households, near-poor households, and children in difficult circumstances; at the same time, implementing many support policies on housing, health insurance, education, credit and free buses.
In the field of culture, the construction of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space has become a highlight of the 2020-2025 term.
To date, the whole city has developed more than 5,800 models at agencies, schools, businesses, religious establishments and public spaces, contributing to spreading Ho Chi Minh's ideology, ethics, and style, fostering cultural identity and the dynamic, creative, and compassionate spirit of Ho Chi Minh City people.
