Central Da Nang City achieved low results on seven out of 11 annual socio-economic development targets, according to a year-end report announced at the city's People's Council meeting on December 4.

The report blamed the poor performance on slowing socio-economic development caused by the worldwide economic downturn, which lowered the city's growth rate, service production value, industrial production and construction and export turn-over. These factors also negatively affected the State budget revenue, which in turn diminished funds for investment and job creation.

"The city had a difficult time with social-economic development due to the global economic crisis. Enterprises faced bankruptcy and had to deal with massive inventories and high interest rates," the city's chairman Van Huu Chien said at the meeting.

"Last year, the city set a target of 13 percent for economic growth, but we could only achieve 9.1 percent," Chien said, adding that the city's State budget revenue was only 10.9 trillion VND (519 million USD), 81 percent of what was hoped for.

"We have created 28,000 jobs, only 86 percent of the target for the whole year," Chien said.

The city's Small-and Medium-sized Enterprises Association reported that over 4,100 of the 14,000 enterprises in the city had gone bankrupt since 2009.

However, the city achieved growth in the fields of tourism, foreign direct investment and social housing for the poor.

Da Nang attracted 241 FDI projects with total capital of 3.6 billion USD, while the tourism sector hosted over 2.6 million tourists, bringing in 2.6 trillion VND (124 million USD).

The city has made available 7,700 apartments for low-income residents and rooms for 6,000 students.

At the two-day meeting, the city's people's council focused on social-economic development plans for 2013 as well as approving a vote of confidence for the council's members.-VNA