On March 13, Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duoc chaired a workshop titled “Solutions to promote double-digit growth from traditional and new growth drivers while ensuring energy stability in Ho Chi Minh City.”
The workshop gathered numerous recommendations from experts, enterprises, and relevant departments, focusing on policy solutions that would enable the city to maintain double-digit growth amid global challenges such as geopolitical conflicts that have triggered energy crises and disruptions in global supply chains.
In his concluding remarks, Chairman Nguyen Van Duoc emphasized that a key consensus emerging from the workshop was that achieving the double-digit growth target cannot rely solely on conventional economic measures. Instead, the city must pursue a comprehensive, coordinated, and breakthrough development strategy to ensure sustainable and resilient growth.
Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duoc stressed that achieving double-digit growth is not merely an economic target but a strategic development requirement for Ho Chi Minh City in the new phase. As the country’s leading economic hub, the city bears the responsibility of taking the lead in creating new driving forces, promoting innovation in development models, and making stronger contributions to the nation’s overall economic expansion.
However, the city leader also candidly noted that the international context is presenting significant challenges to the economy. Geopolitical fluctuations, energy crises, global inflation, and disruptions in supply chains are directly affecting production costs, transportation, and international trade.
These factors, he noted, not only influence economic growth but also pose major challenges to macroeconomic stability and the competitiveness of Vietnam.
In this context, Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duoc emphasized that ensuring energy security has become a strategic requirement for economic growth. A rapidly developing and sustainable economy, he noted, must be supported by an energy system that is stable, secure, and capable of adapting to global shocks.
At the same time, Ho Chi Minh City needs to further accelerate the transformation of its growth model toward one driven by knowledge, science and technology, and innovation. According to Mr. Nguyen Van Duoc, experiences from many major cities around the world indicate that the most critical resources in the new economic era are no longer natural resources or capital but knowledge, technology, and innovation capacity.
Therefore, the city should strongly promote the development of an innovation ecosystem while advancing the digital economy, green economy, high-tech industries, and high-value-added services. The objective, he stressed, is not only to achieve faster growth but also to ensure smarter, more sustainable development with higher value creation, thereby reinforcing the position of Ho Chi Minh City as a regional hub for technology, finance, and innovation.
According to Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duoc, to realize this objective, Ho Chi Minh City must effectively leverage strategic resolutions issued by the Politburo and the National Assembly, including special mechanisms and policies designated for the city. These measures are regarded as an important foundation for expanding development space, mobilizing investment resources more effectively, and strengthening decentralization and delegation of authority to the municipal government.
According to the orientations discussed at the workshop, Ho Chi Minh City will promote three groups of growth drivers in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
First are the traditional growth drivers, including investment, consumption, and exports, in which social investment plays a leading role in stimulating economic expansion.
Second are new growth drivers, such as the digital economy, green economy, science and technology, and innovation. The city also plans to establish a free trade zone and an international financial center to attract capital, advanced technology, and high-quality human resources.
Third are foundational drivers, which include improving institutional frameworks, enhancing governance capacity, developing human resources, and improving the quality of urban living.
Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duoc also stressed that rapid growth must be closely associated with sustainability and resilience against external shocks. This requires Ho Chi Minh City to proactively build a comprehensive development security system, encompassing economic security, energy security, supply chain security, and urban security.
He assigned the Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies to take the lead, in coordination with the Department of Finance, the Office of the municipal People’s Committee, and relevant agencies, in reviewing and finalizing the city’s double-digit growth plan for the period 2026–2030. The institute will also advise on the development of a comprehensive action program and implementation plan to realize this objective.
The city leader also requested relevant authorities to establish a monitoring and early-warning system for energy supply conditions; conduct a comprehensive review of the supply capacity of electricity, petroleum, and other energy sources; and formulate contingency scenarios to ensure adequate supply for production and business activities under various circumstances.
Relevant agencies have also been tasked with accelerating the progress of strategic infrastructure projects, particularly those related to urban transportation systems, urban railways, logistics, digital infrastructure, and energy infrastructure, in order to create favorable conditions for economic development and investment attraction.
Chairman Nguyen Van Duoc expressed confidence that, with the support of experts, scientists, and the business community, together with the city’s long-standing tradition of dynamism and innovation, Ho Chi Minh City possesses sufficient conditions to achieve its double-digit growth target, pursue rapid and sustainable development, and continue affirming its role as the country’s leading economic engine in Vietnam.
)
