The Chairman made the statement while he and representatives of agencies August 14 worked with some enterprises in Vinh Loc Industrial Park in Binh Chanh District.
Chairman Phong affirmed the city's business association plays a vital role in the city’s economic development; therefore, city leaders usually meet the association once a year to listen to enterprises’ wishes from which city authorities can improve business environment to strengthen the city’s economic growth in the future.
He added the association should connect enterprises together to expand business development.
Of 6,000 enterprises, just around some hundreds of them have registered capital of over VND1 trillion up. Once connected, the large-scale ones will help small enterprises to develop more. Accordingly, Chairman Phong expected the association to connect enterprises together and reflect their opinions to city authorities.
At the end of meeting, Mr. Phong suggested the Department of Industry and Trade to work with Food and Foodstuff Association (FFA), the Department of Science and Technology, and the Food Safety Management Board to work out a program to deal with existing matters. The Department of Industry and Trade should listen to the association’s proposal and then submit to the People’s Committee to resolve these matters, said Mr. Phong.
Noticeably, Mr. Phong said that enterprises can seek assistance from agencies to by sending opinions to FFA which will then submit to the authorities.
The city leader said around 6,000 hectare will be reserved for building industrial parks by 2020; at present, industrial parks cover an areas of 4,000 hectare. The city will allocate one land section for start-up firms. He insisted that the city will not lure foreign-invested companies by all means.
Speaking at the meeting, FFA chairwoman Ly Kim Chi said in the first six months of the year, the city’s Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) hit VND 585,635 billion ($25,180,214,808), a year-on-year rise of 7.86 percent. The rate of four key industries was 10 percent in GRDP, apart from this, food and foodstuff processing accounted for 3 percent.
Notwithstanding, through initial survey, up to 85 percent food enterprises have little knowledge to integrate with the world.
One of difficulties which enterprises are facing is that they have not got access to stimulus package with low interest rate. Worse, to enable to put products into modern distribution channels, enterprises offer discount of 15 percent to 35 percent which might be its profits. Some enterprises complained also that they had been ordered to pay tax arrears of ten years ago and associated fines.
Additionally, food and foodstuff companies said they are encountering difficulties with the governmental regulation No. 09/2016 requiring enterprises to add nutritional supplement into food. People’s Committee has petitioned to resolve the problem, yet until now it has not been resolved.
