The announcement was released by the organizers, including the HCMC Department of External Affairs, the HCMC Institute for Development Studies (HIDS), and the HCMC Business Association at a press conference in the city on September 12.
According to Deputy Director of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies (HIDS), Pham Binh An said that the city currently has 300,000 businesses, but 90 percent are small and medium-sized enterprises with weak competitive capacity. The contribution of HCMC to the country's export turnover has decreased from 45 percent to 12 percent, and its contribution to Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) has dropped from 23 percent to 16 percent.
The forum will focus on issues, such as industrial transformation trends in the world, the governance ecosystem and policies for boosting industrial transformation, HCMC’s industrial transformation strategy and new technology trends, and the role of the city’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in industrial transformation, priorities in the industrial transformation strategy, and the role of businesses and stakeholders in industrial transformation.
This year’s event will attract more than 1,500 local and international participants, including leaders, experts, representatives of financial organizations and business associations from 40 Vietnamese localities and delegations from countries consisting of China, Russia, the US, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Australia, Indian and others, and from international financial institutions such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), World Bank (WB), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR ).
On this occasion, HCMC will inaugurate the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in HCMC. It is the second C4IR in Southeast Asia to participate in the WEF's global C4IR network after C4IR in Malaysia launched in 2023. The center is expected to become a center of expertise for policy co-building and piloting policies on constructing the future, creating conditions for technological development and application in the region and the world.
The Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) placed in the HCMC Hi-Tech Park is regarded as one of the city’s important economic development projects, playing the role of a driving force to promote the city’s development in the coming time.
