Director of HCMC’s Department of Information and Communications Le Thai Hy, deputy head of Steering Committee of HCMC Book Festival said the festival 2016 is the largest ever scale book festival with many programs. Compared to the first edition held in 2000 with 150 booths. This year, the festival featured over 710 book booths from 172 publishers, publication companies nationwide, 36 foreign publishers, 300,000 book titles with 30 million copies. The festival also brings over 100 programs including exchanging activities, introduction of books, etc. which suits with the theme of the festival: “Book-Culture-Integration and Development”. The festival also included arts performances, children playground, etc.

Mr. Dinh La Thang emphasized that HCMC Book Festival is a branded festival; the Organiz-ing Committee needs to overcome shortcomings and brings into play strong points to better organize the next book festival. He directed HCMC to construct an official and wide venue for the book festival in the future, and if possible, upgrade it to the National Book Festival and one of the main activities contributing to the construction of HCMC a modern-civilized-sentimental with better living quality.