Expressed by Chairman of HCMC People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong in a meeting with Mrs. Elizabeth Littlefield, President and CEO of OPIC on October 25, attending the meeting includes Mrs. Mary Tarnowka, US Consul General in HCMC.
 
Mr. Phong thanked OPIC for its financial support since 2003 for some projects in Vietnam in fields of communications, manufacturing, consultancy, economic growth, aquaculture, electricity.
 
In his brief introduction of socio-economic situation, Mr. Phong said HCMC is a special urban area and an economic center of Vietnam, a trusted and attractive place for foreign investors, including US ones. Beside achieved results from HCMC and US cooperation relation, Mr. Phong said the achieved results are still modest. Currently, US is ranked 12 out of countries and territories investing in HCMC.
 
In parallel with fast economic growth speed, Mr. Phong shared some difficulty and challenges of HCMC such as urban flooding, hospital overload, environmental pollution, waste treatment, poor infrastructure.  To solve these, the city is now focusing on mobilizing all resources (internal and external) or even to call for foreign cooperation.
Mr. Phong added that OPIC specializes in mobilizing private capital sources to deal with challenges as well as to support US enterprises to do business in developing countries, to ensure financial support and political risks, etc. With its role and functions, he expressed his hope that OPIC will support US enterprises to implement their products in HCMC to help the city address current challenges under various forms, including PPP.

Regarding to the city’s development orientation, Mr. Phong said the city is carrying out the project of building HCMC a smart city in the period of 2017-2025 and a vision to 2020 with a purpose of making HCMC one of the largest economic-financial-commercial-scientific-technology centers of the region. This is an overall project covering many fields of a smart urban area, so the city expects to apply advanced solutions and technology into management and development of strong infrastructure with energy efficiency.

With available strength of the US, Mr. Phong emphasized that the city hopes to continue studying experience and advanced technology of US enterprises to build HCMC a smart city in the sustainable direction.
 
For her part, Mrs. Elizabeth Littlefield said she hopes to study investment fields that HCMC is calling for such as infrastructure, insurance, environment, health care, agriculture, especially energy and renewable energy. Mrs. Elizabeth Littlefield said she will share this information to US investors.
 
She expressed her belief that in the context of well-developed bilateral cooperation relation between Vietnam and US under the framework of “comprehensive partnership” and the deep global integration of Vietnam, US investment in Vietnam including HCMC will continue to increase in the coming time.
 
At the reception, HCMC’s delegation led by Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong expects to make a 3 day visit to Chicago (November 1-3 2016) to take part in the conference on Smart City. The visit is expected to open more trade opportunities for both sides in the coming time.

HCM CITYWEB