In the spirit of sharing and discussing, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong highly valued the proposals and welcomed the idea of organizing regular dialogues between leaders of HCMC and young entrepreneurs.

In a talk about the city’s direction with enterprises, Mr. Phong said the city is in the process of establishing startup ecology and focusing on 5 key sectors including electronics-IT, mechanical engineering, chemical and food and foodstuff manufacturing. Supporting industry is also paid a special attention by the city. The production sector of the city is now much dependent on processing with low added value, therefore, the city has been developing key sectors sustainably with higher added value.

Given with opportunities and challenges of global integration such as AEC, TPP in the coming time, Mr. Phong said: “ In the next five years after joining Free Trade Agreements of the region and the world, we have to find the way to enhance the competiveness of Vietnam in general and of HCMC in particular. The must start from enhancing competitiveness of every enterprise”.

He added in the process of development of business community, what the city now focusing on is not the number of 500,000 enterprises but enterprises with high competitiveness and strong brands.

HCMC will make efforts in arranging a technology development fund and promoting innovation and creativity. Leaders of HCMC will openly receive proposals of HCMC Young Business Association to timely support them as well as regularly organize meetings with young entrepreneurs to seek and collect their opinion on improving business climate of the city.

In addition, leaders of HCMC are in the process of working with the Government to work out support policies for startup businesses and other enterprises for innovation and creativity till 2020.

HCM CITYWEB