The southern economic hub of HCM City this year aims to attract 8.4 billion USD in foreign direct investment, according to the city's Department of Planning and Investment.

The city also hopes that 1.43 billion USD of the total will be implemented this year.

By attracting FDI, the city has acquired state-of-the-art technologies and advanced management skills and created hundreds of thousands of jobs, said the chairman of the municipal People's Committee, Le Hoang Quan, during a recent investment conference in HCM City.

The investment has also enabled the development of technical and social infrastructure, he said, adding that FDI has helped the city develop some key industries such as software, telecommunications, electronics and finance and banking, in addition to hotels, urban areas, amusement parks and logistics.

However, the city has been affected by the global downturn and while facing a growing shortage of skilled workers, suffers from poor infrastructure and rising production costs as well as growing competition from neighbouring countries in attracting FDI.

The city attracted only 2 billion USD in FDI in 2009, down by 77 percent compared to 2008.

The city will continue to speed up administrative procedures, perfect its legal framework to conform with international standards and make further investments in transport infrastructure, Quan said.

Cheap land prices and labour costs are no longer the city's biggest advantages over other countries in terms of FDI attraction, Quan acknowledged.

Thus, improving the management capacity of local authorities and personnel resources to help gain access to large amounts of investment is now the city's most important task, he said./.