Capital city takes actions to keep sustainable growth

Hanoi (VNA) – Hanoi is making moves to fuel development since it assesses local GDP growth, which hit 8.2 percent in 2016 – a six-year high, as unsustainable.

The municipal People’s Committee is reforming its operations by aligning work regulations with laws, increasing administrative discipline, and enhancing public employees’ sense of responsibility.

The capital is stepping up IT application to build an e-administration and promote administrative reforms, enhancing the administration’s contact with local people and firms. This is hoped to improve the business climate to facilitate start-ups and attract investment.

A number of new policies and mechanisms have been carried out to solve social issues and tackle business obstacles. They focus on site clearance, building resettlement houses with private funding, renovating old condominiums, social housing, calling for private investment in rural water supply and burying overhead cables, and treating water pollution.

Hanoi has been urging agencies and localities to apply IT to facilitate tax payments. As a result, nearly 174 trillion VND (7.7 billion USD) was collected for the State budget in 2016, rising by 16.2 percent from the previous year. A price stabilising programme was also implemented, helping to control inflation, stabilising the economy and boosting growth.

Improvements have been made in the local investment and business environment, thanks to mechanisms and policies dealing with site clearance problems and accelerating domestic and foreign invested projects. 

Hanoi has had many business climate-related criteria higher than the targets set by the State such as online business registration and e-tax payment.  It ranked 24th of the 63 provinces and cities in terms of the Provincial Competitiveness Index last year, climbing two places from 2015, the highest position it has ever been ranked.

The city has used synchronous solutions in investment attraction, luring 163 domestic projects and 445 foreign ones. New enterprises set up in 2016 had charter capital of over 203 trillion VND (nearly 9 million USD), up 42 percent year on year.

The industry-construction sector enjoyed a growth rate of 8.8 percent. While investment in local industrial parks increased by 4.6 times from 2015, construction activities had an added value jump of 13 percent thanks to recovery in the property market and support policies on social housing.

Authorities in Hanoi will pay attention to tourism, which the city considers a key industry. The city recorded a 8.1-percent rise in tourist arrivals in 2016.-VNA