HCM City hopes to double its average income by 2020 and triple it by 2025, according to a master plan approved by the People’s Council on May 13.

Form 3,600 USD last year it is expected to go up to 8,430-8,822 USD by the end of the decade and to around 14,000 USD by 2025.

However, the 2025 target of 13,900 USD would only be marginally higher than the 2010 figures for Jakarta and Bangkok.

These figures were released in a report by Nguyen Van Dong, head of the city People’s Council’s Economy and Budgets Department, at the 9 th meeting of the People’s Council on May 13.

The Council approved the income growth target of 10-10.5 percent for the 2011-2015 period set in the master plan.

“These growth rates are reasonable,” he said.

The Council urged the municipal People’s Committee to give priority to improving the administrative work, and called for measures to strengthen social welfare, saying a master plan for development “must aim to improve living standards”

The committee should tweak the housing policy, giving priority to re-settlement projects, relocating people living along rivers and canals, renovating run-down tenements, and providing housing for the poor.-VNA