He agreed with a city smart tourist development plan presented by Mr. Antonio Alessandro, saying that last year, foreign visitors to HCMC approximated seven million accounting for 50 percent of foreign visitors to Vietnam. Hence, Mr. Nhan suggested Italy to introduce partners to promote and implement the smart tourist project to further develop the field.

According to Mr. Nhan, most of businesses in HCMC are small and medium scaled. Therefore he highly advocated the Italy-financed project to support these firms and hoped that the project will help businesses in Vietnam and in HCMC enhance competitiveness and develop in the future.

In education field, he expressed gladness to see the cooperation project between Italy and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in HCMC well developing.

He wished the new ambassador to have a successful tenure in Vietnam to contribute in boosting the cooperation between the two countries.

Mr. Antonio Alessandro appreciated the dynamism and development of HCMC and affirmed that Italy wants to further cooperation with Vietnam and HCMC in fields which are Italy's strengths such as tourism, culture, education and smart city development.