HCM City trade authorities unveil eight measures to boost exports. Photo: VNA HCMCity (VNS/VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Industry and Trade hasunveiled a project to promote exports over the next five years.
‘DevelopingExports in HCM City until 2025, with a Vision to 2030’forecasts opportunities for and challenges to exports, identifies the mostcompetitive export sectors and products and propose solutions and strategiesfor developing exports.
Itwill take growth quality as the foundation to shift to exports of services andintangible goods such as software and digital content, encourage links betweenthe country's various regions to increase exports to markets withwhich Vietnam has free tradeagreements, improve the competitiveness of export items by capitalising on thecity’s comparative advantages, join global value chains, and increase linksbetween businesses.
Firmsshould speed up digital transformation to expand exports amid risingcross-border e-commerce, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said.
Dang Hoang Hai, director of the ministry’s Vietnam e-Commerce and Digital EconomyAgency, said together with opportunities from new-generation free tradeagreements, the trend of shifting from traditional to digital-based businessmodels is becoming common.
Digitaltransformation is an effective solution for firms to expand their export marketsand create a flexible and efficient export model, he said.
Anumber of Vietnamese firms are now setting up business-to-business andbusiness-to-consumer e-commerce business models, he added.
Ona global scale, cross-border e-commerce is developing rapidly and has become amajor trend in trade in recent years.
Theproject will also develop logistics, replan sea and river ports in the city andtheir infrastructure, improve transport links between HCM City and otherproduction areas so that the city becomes a logistics and export services hub.
Itwill develop human resources, reform public services and employ IT to create anintegrated and shared import-export database for businesses’ use.
Thecity will concentrate on the eight following solutions to increase its exportsover the next decade:
Improvethe technical level of the mechanical industry to enable a shift up the valuechain with higher chances of diversification while boosting the growth ofsupporting industries to raise the rate of domestic production.
Improvethe ability to export software and digital content related to finance andtourism.
Promoteresearch and development activities, foster the growth of supporting industriesto raise the rate of domestic production while attracting investment in hi-techprojects to support electrical – electronic products and launch the ‘SaigonInnovation Network’ at the Saigon Hi-tech Park.
Improvethe competitiveness of conventional labour-intensive export groups, develop thelocal market for feedstock and raw materials for manufacturing andvalue-added services.
Strengthenthe strategy for logistics growth in the city.
Increasethe performance of investment and trade promotion tasks for typical exportproducts in the globalisation era.
Continueto reform administrative procedures to ensure more transparency and reduce theprocessing time and cost, and adopt solutions for reducing the time it takesfor both documents and goods at customs by half.
Cooperatewith research units and educational institutions to train quality humanresources.
Exportsby companies based in the city in the first eight months of the year were worth28.4 billion USD, a 4 percent increaseyear-on-year, according to the Department of Industry and Trade./.
VNA
