A flooded street in HCM City. (Source: VNA)Ho Chi Minh City (VNA) – HCM City will focus its financial resources into key projects under the city’s 7 breakthrough programmes in 2017 in order to improve the appearance of the city and the living conditions of local residents.
Chairman of the HCM City People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong underlined the plan at a conference on implementing social-economic tasks in 2017 held on December 30.
The breakthrough programmes aim to relocate and settle down residents living on and along canals, give a facelift to urban landscape in combination with improving the water environment and repair and build new apartment buildings to replace degraded old ones.
HCM City has quickly completed procedures necessary for commencing projects on reducing traffic jams at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport and Cat Lai port, addressing severe flooded areas, upgrading Ba Bo Canal and several hospitals, with the goal of completing them within 2017.
In order to achieve 19 social-economic goals in 2017, including a GRDP growth rate of 8.4-8.7 percent, the city has set forth many measures, focusing on attracting multinational corporations, encouraging the formation of big private companies besides developing small- and medium-sized enterprises, and boosting the linkage between domestic and foreign-invested firms.
Phong urged local authorities to continue implementing specific schemes assisting the development of enterprises and promoting startup, helping the city achieve its goal of having 50,000 newly-established enterprises in 2017.
In 2016, the city’s GDP expanded 8.05 percent to reach 1,023.92 trillion VND and non-oil export value totalled 29.2 billion USD, up 10 percent from last year. The industrial production index went up 7.33 percent year on year. The city collected 307.3 trillion VND (13.8 billion USD) for the budget.
Total social investment capital was 310.5 trillion VND (14 billion USD). The city attracted 3.7 billion USD in foreign direct investment while 36,000 new enterprises were established during the year.-VNA
