Officials from Ho Chi Minh City are visiting Japan to call for Japanese businesses, including those from the Kansai region, to invest in the city, according to the Sai gon Giai phong (Liberated Sai gon) daily.

Le Thanh Hai, Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee, who led 30 businesses from the city to visit Japan , met with Japanese leaders and enterprises of Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren) in Osaka prefecture on Oct. 11.

Vietnam and Japan hold great potential and opportunities for cooperation in high technology, Hai said, noting that HCM City encourages investment in support industries and human resource development.

While pointing out difficulties in infrastructure and human resources faced by the city, Hai made a commitment to create suitable conditions for Japanese businesses to invest in the city.

The paper reported that Japanese businesses asked HCM City leaders to pay attention to administrative reform and improve the legal environment and procedures to speed up cooperation and investment between the two sides, not only in economic trade but also in tourism and people-to-people exchanges.

They also raised concerns over the shortage of electricity and water in the Vietnamese city.

Kankeiren will take part in an economic exchange in Vietnam ’s central coastal city of Da Nang on November 20.

Earlier, the Vietnamese delegation held talks with the Osaka city mayor Hiramatsu Kunio and Osaka prefecture’s deputy governor Kimura Shinsaku, calling on municipal and provincial leaders to work as a bridge to assist Japanese businesses to invest in HCM City .

Later in the day, the delegation made a fact-finding tour of an environmentally friendly treatment plant in Osaka prefecture./.