The Politburo’s Resolution 09-NQ/TW has obviously become a historic turning point when allowing HCMC’s continued refinement of the draft Special Urban Law.
The transition from a pilot mechanism to a specialized law acts as a powerful institutional lever. It effectively creates a robust legal corridor which is aimed at maximizing resources and meeting the governance demands of a sea-facing, integrated megacity like HCMC.
For decades, the Government has consistently paid special attention to HCMC. This stems from its highly unique position as the nation’s largest urban center, a formidable hub for economics, finance, science, and technology, an international exchange focal point, and an area with immense spillover potential.
This profound interest is vividly reflected through Resolutions 20, 16, and 31 of the Politburo, alongside a system of specific mechanisms outlined in Resolutions 54, 98, and 260 from the National Assembly. After more than three years of implementing Resolution 31-NQ/TW, HCMC has reportedly achieved several crucial results.
However, it’s clear that the outcomes achieved haven’t fully matched the city’s vast potential. In some aspects, the institutionalization process remains unsynchronized; while pilot mechanisms have yielded initial results, they’re often narrow in scale, short-term, and overly reliant on multiple bureaucratic tiers of authority.
The current landscape is drastically different. Following the merger of administrative boundaries, HCMC now contributes a staggering 23.1 percent of the GDP and nearly 30.2 percent of the national budget revenue.
A colossal, sea-facing economic entity simply can’t operate smoothly under the restrictive cloak of an outdated mechanism. Ultimately, the megacity desperately needs an outstanding legal framework to eliminate all administrative barriers that are currently restraining its creativity.
The core spirit of the new resolution is precisely about materializing the philosophy that the city works for the whole country, and the whole country supports the city. Enacting a separate law built on the principle of fundamental decentralization and delegation of power is, at the end of the day, a strategic investment mindset targeting one of the nation’s most impactful growth poles.
Once having been untied by the necessary autonomy and equipped with a policy experimentation mechanism, the megacity will possess a full collection of legal tools to help definitively resolve backlogged projects and unblock frozen land resources.
It appears this liberated influx of resources won’t just solve the internal conundrums the city is currently grappling with; as a rule of thumb, it’ll also help generate substantial revenue to be regulated back into the central budget.
Responding to the expectations of the Party and the State, HCMC firmly commits to taking action through a robust system of quantitative targets. The city has reportedly set an ambitious goal to maintain a minimum GRDP growth rate of 10 percent per year, aiming to push the digital economy to account for 40 percent of the GRDP by 2030.
To pull this off, the megacity must spearhead the shift toward a growth model rooted in the knowledge economy, while mastering core technologies in semiconductor microchips as well as artificial intelligence and smoothly operating a next-generation international financial center.
The ultimate yardstick of a constructive institution doesn’t lie in dry growth indicators; rather, it absolutely must touch upon the substantive happiness of the people.
The principal welfare axis of the new resolution is directed straight at untangling pressing social security projects, specifically:
- allocating budgets to complete 200 kilometers of TOD urban railways before 2030,
- fundamentally resolving the chronic flooding crisis,
- ramping up the construction of social housing,
- providing free periodic health check-ups for all citizens,
- establishing lifelong electronic health records.
The Party Committee, armed forces, and dwellers of HCMC have always carried within themselves a tradition of creativity and the resilience to overcome hardships, constantly remaining ready to forge ahead and pave the way.
With a crucial, highly special new resolution now officially promulgated, the city bearing the name of the beloved Uncle Ho is primed to step into a new historic chapter; it’s relentlessly striving to break through and develop to a level truly worthy of expectations in this new era.
