Tran Du Lich, a respected economist, said at a conference reviewing socio-economic development in February that HCM City needs to prevent the downward trend, maintain growth and consider this the key goal in 2023.

Lich said the major issues of Vietnam’s economy are the recovery of the real estate market, the financial market and bank loan interest rates. These pose big challenges to the country’s targeted economic growth rate of 6.5 percent in 2023.

“Enterprises are waiting for the government’s actions, but there’s nothing clear. Amid inflation of below 4 percent and such high bank loan interest rates, HCM City efforts in investment and development may be stunted,” he warned.

The economist said that HCM City needs to seek spaces to develop. In 2023, it should try to maintain growth and not let the growth rate fall too sharply from the 8-8.5 percent levels. 

If HCM City cannot retain the growth rate this year, it will face difficulties next year and the city’s economic recovery will face challenges.

Lich said the city should research and outline measures to promote the development of key sectors, especially trade, finance, real estate, tourism, logistics and construction.

He highly appreciated the city’s great efforts to organize meetings with real estate firms to discuss solutions to remove difficulties.

“The HCM City People’s Committee needs to assign local departments to name all the projects which are slow in implementing procedures and the reasons to create transparency,” Lich suggested.

“If the bottlenecks can be removed, this will not only bring confidence to people and enterprises, but also help promote production and business,” HCM City Chair Phan Van Mai said.

Tran Chung