Ho Chi Minh City will give top priority to removing difficulties for production, supporting the market and solving bad debts in the remaining months of this year, a municipal leader has said.

Addressing a September 26 meeting of the HCM City People’s Committee on socio-economic development in the fourth quarter, Chairman of the committee Le Hoang Quan noted that the local economy has showed signs of recovery with more than 4,700 businesses resuming their operations and nearly 1,800 new ones established.

This shows that businesses have initially overcome their difficulties so the city should create more favourable conditions for them, he said.

The chairman instructed agencies and local administrations to keep a close watch of production and business activities in order to provide timely assistance, particularly in improving credit access for businesses ahead of the peak consuming season of the year before the New Year festival.

The Department of Planning and Investment reported that in the first ninth months of this year, HCM City maintained a quarter-to-quarter GDP growth, with the Q3 figure reaching 10.3 percent, 0.7 percent higher than that of the same period last year. The city’s index of industrial production (IIP) was estimated to increase by 6 percent year-on-year.

However, the southern hub still faces high inventories and bad debts.

To deal with these problems, the municipal People’s Committee has set out measures such as providing credit support and increasing trade promotion, investment and service.-VNA