Chairman of the municipal People's Committee Phan Van Mai
He made the statement at the fourth session of the tenth tenure of People's Council of HCMC’s question-and-answer session chaired by Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council Nguyen Thi Le.
In addition to issuance of a plan to implement solutions to improve the investment environment with 10 groups of specific tasks and solutions to implement the 2021 theme, Ho Chi Minh City has worked with central agencies to clear difficulties for the city’s key projects.
At the same time, city administrations will organize meetings with businesses listening to their opinions and obstacles caused by the law.
Ho Chi Minh City has established many working groups to quickly remove difficulties and obstacles for businesses in various fields. A group will remove hindrances for investment projects using land that does not use the state budget capital.
Another group will give support to businesses to fight the Covid-19 epidemic. A group will monitor and direct the activities of government-owned corporations under the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City. The last group is assigned to remove difficulties for foreign direct investment enterprises.
Ho Chi Minh City has made regular contact with business associations to listen to suggestions on epidemic prevention measures as well as feedback from businesses to promptly have supportive solutions.
In the coming time, Ho Chi Minh City will continue holding meetings to listen to businesses’ suggestions so as to understand companies’ difficulties and problems.
Chairman Mai said that businesses are facing many difficulties in terms of capital, labor, market entry, and expansion. Businesses expected city administrations to assist them in eliminating problems. Therefore, Ho Chi Minh City continues to focus on actions to remove hurdles for businesses in the coming time.
Mr. Mai added that the People's Committee of the southern largest city has worked with associations and leaders in provinces and cities where residents used to work in the city to bring workers back to HCMC.
Additionally, employees will get vaccinated against Covid-19 if they have not received any doses of vaccine to work safely. At the same time, city administrations promised to provide accommodation and employment for those who agree to return.
Besides, Chairman Mai affirmed that city administrators realized that private investment resources are extremely large and very important for Ho Chi Minh City. Therefore, the city needs to improve the investment environment and administrative reform to open up investment resources as well as remove obstacles in stagnant projects.
Last but not least, Ho Chi Minh City will review and reclassify projects, what can call for private investment, or encourage individuals to take part in large national-level public-private partnership (PPP) projects.
Ho Chi Minh City will continue carrying out administrative reform and accompanying investors, to attract more resources, said Chairman Mai.
He added that administrative reform is very important and a problem of the southern metropolis. According to him, if the removal of obstacles in administrative reform can be done thoroughly, it will boost resources for HCMC's development.
In 2021, Ho Chi Minh City has formed mission groups to deal with the same groups of tasks or each specific job. Ho Chi Minh City will promote this model to solve backlogs, complaints of people, and problems of businesses.
At the same time, Ho Chi Minh City will apply information technology in building case data and records so that long-standing cases will not be missed. Thereby, the results of each individual and each agency and handling of cases and records will be assessed.
The Covid-19 epidemic has not ended and has complicated developments, especially the Omicron variant that has appeared in many countries in recent days, so dwellers in Ho Chi Minh City should not be negligent but need to continue to practice 5K principles.
Mr. Phan Van Mai pointed out some outstanding results in 2021. The number of new cases and deaths tended to decrease sharply at end of November and early December because of high demand for travel when the city resume business activities. In fact, HCMC is still keep the disease under control and its alert level at 2.
Mr. Mai talks to participants
Recently, the new strain Omicron is threatening to threaten the achievements of some countries in epidemic prevention and control. Thus, Ho Chi Minh City is closely monitoring and strengthening epidemic surveillance in order to detect early cases and prevent the risk of entry and spread of the new strain Omicron.
The Covid-19 epidemic has not ended and has complicated developments, especially the Omicron variant that has appeared in many countries in recent days, so it is imperative that Ho Chi Minh City not be negligent.
Regarding the results of the implementation of the theme of 2021, Chairman Mai said that, for the five-year plan 2021-2025, Ho Chi Minh City decided to build an urban government and improve the investment environment in 2021. Therefore, despite facing many difficulties during a prolonged period of strict social distancing, the city has achieved certain results with the efforts to follow the assignment since the beginning of the year.
Chairman Mai acknowledged that shortcomings and limitations are hindering the process of recovery and sustainable socio-economic development in the city. In which, the service sector accounts for 62 percent of HCMC's GRDP structure, but most of them have to suspend operations for many months, so businesses, cooperatives and business households in this field are facing difficulties; hence, the government should formulate supporting policies for recovery and development.
Removing obstacles of mechanisms and inadequacies in regulations to maximize investment resources is still a challenge, requiring cooperation amongst competent agencies and the efforts of the administrative apparatus.
According to the Chairman of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, the communication work is not professional, inconsistent, sometimes causing confusion among the people. Information technology has not met the requirements of information and data management, lack of communication between agencies, affecting the work of tracing and managing population mobility. Although social security work has made great efforts to take care of the people, especially disadvantaged groups of workers, there are still shortcomings, and the support for people is still uneven.
Mr. Mai emphasized that Ho Chi Minh City is one of the localities that has suffered the most damage due to the outbreaks of the fourth Covid-19 pandemic causing unprecedented socio-economic consequences. However, he believed that with the highest effort of the entire machinery of state and residents’ consensus, the city will surely recover and develop with a new position.
According to him, the city will this year focus is on caring for and strengthening grassroots health care. Recently, the People's Committee has worked with the Minister of Health to arrive at an agreement to implement a pilot project to organize a health station. In this regard, Ho Chi Minh City took the initiative, saw the inadequacies, and was prepared for changes in the future. Under the Ministry of Health’s policy, Ho Chi Minh City will accelerate the implementation of this project.
Besides the fixed medical station, the city will build mobile medical stations as a temporary solution to mobilize forces including military medics, private healthcare, even retired medical staff to work together in operating mobile medical stations which meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control.
