On December 15, Standing Vice Chairman of HCMC People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem received Japanese Deputy Minister of Environment Shigemoto Kajihara on his working visit to the city.

At the reception, Mr. Le Thanh Liem said HCMC is implementing action programs to cope with and mitigate impacts of climate change. The city has also defined that handling environmental issues impacted by climate change is very important for the city to develop its economy and to improve living quality for local citizens. The city highly appreciated JICA’s assistance in anti-flooding and improving management capability of wastewater treatment system.

According to Mr. Le Thanh Liem, HCMC and Osaka (Japan) has signed a MOU on cooperation in low carbon city development in the period of 2016 - 2020. In the framework of reducing greenhouse gas emissions between Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and JICA, HCMC is chosen as a pilot place of the program. Besides, the city has encouraged local people, enterprises to save energy, use green energy to reduce environmental impacts.

Mr. Le Thanh Liem emphasized that the city hopes to receive support from Japan in climate change adaptation projects by technology transfer, capital assistance and human resource training. Mr. Liem expressed his belief that this is one of the important measures to ensure sustainable development and to enhance competitiveness of the city’s investment environment.

For his part, Mr. Shigemoto Kajihara thanked HCMC’s leaders for their warm welcome to the Japanese delegation. He affirmed that Japan will strengthen cooperation with HCMC in implementing environment related projects and discuss initiatives on effective cooperation contributing to the good relation between Vietnam and Japan.

HCM CITYWEB