Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has urged the northern port city of Hai Phong to combine industrial development with restructuring, prioritising high-tech and higher value-added products and exports.

At a working session with key municipal leaders in Hai Phong on December 9, the PM described industry as the locality’s advantage along with its seaports, an airport and relatively synchronous infrastructure.

He asked the city to heed domestic and foreign investment attraction while giving more importance to agricultural development with the application of science and technology in this field in order to yield high value-added products.

“The city needs to roll out policies to lure investors in rural areas, thus attracting labourers and contributing to the restructuring of the rural economy,” he said.

The leader also suggested the building of specific policies and mechanisms to spur the development of modern services for tourism and human resources development.

Hai Phong was requested to implement the new-style rural area building programme more drastically and continue poverty reduction, rural job generation, enhancing national defence and security, and ensuring social safety and order.

At the meeting, PM Dung highly valued the city’s efforts in handling difficulties and extracting its potential and advantages for development over the past three years.

Apart from increased capacity of seaports, positive results have been seen in various fields, ranging from foreign direct investment attraction, services, agriculture and new-style rural area building to administrative reform, ensuring social order and reducing traffic accidents, he said.

In order to fulfil the five-year plan (2011-2015), PM Dung underlined the need for the city to comprehensively evaluate the implementation of socio-economic tasks over the past three years.

According to Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Duong Anh Dien, the locality’s gross domestic product growth reached 7.51 percent, about 1.4 times higher than the national average this year.
Foreign direct investment hit a record of over 2.6 billion USD, ranking third nationwide, he said.

The “National Tourism Year of the Red River Delta-Hai Phong 2013” has helped to polish the city’s image, attracting more than five million visitors to the city, up 11.2 percent against the same period last year.

The municipal official said Hai Phong has set a target of addressing difficulties in production, boosting growth and economic recovery in line with renewing its growth model, urban economic restructuring, socio-cultural development, ensuring social welfare and improving people’s living standards.

Urban management and development, new-style rural area building and environmental protection, will also receive more attention, he said.

At the same time, the city will give more importance to scientific and technological development, the improvement of personnel quality, administrative reform, anti-corruption and wastefulness, external affairs and international integration, national defence and security, political security, social order and safety.

The city strives to reach an economic growth rate of 8-9 percent next year, he said.-VNA