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| A corner of Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo by Long Ho. Source: https://www.hcmcpv.org.vn) |
Ho Chi Minh City identifies service as an important industry contributing to the overall development of the city. The city is increasingly affirming its position as the largest and most diverse service center in the country.
According to data from the Ho Chi Minh City Statistics Office, in the past 10 years, the service industry has always had a high contribution ratio, over 60% of the total product in the area. In 2023, the 9 main service industries alone contributed 59.6% of GRDP (total product in the area), accounting for 90% of the service sector.
Data for the first 6 months of 2024 show that, in the overall growth rate, the trade and service sector contributed the most, 4.34 percentage points, and had the highest growth rate of 7.26%. Especially trade, transportation and warehousing, finance and banking, professional activities, science and technology are the four service sectors with high growth rates and accounted for 63.1% of the internal service sector.
With such important contributions, Ho Chi Minh City's service sector has made breakthroughs, continuously increasing year by year. Ho Chi Minh City is increasingly affirming its position as the largest and most diverse service center in the country.
According to Mr. Nguyen Van Dung, Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, Ho Chi Minh City identifies service as an important sector contributing to the overall development of the city. In recent times, Ho Chi Minh City has proposed many programs to promote the development of the service sector such as: implementing the projects "Orientation for developing Ho Chi Minh City's service infrastructure in the period of 2020 - 2025, towards 2040"; Project “Developing the logistics industry to 2025, with a vision to 2030”; and building an international financial center in Ho Chi Minh City.
Notably, the construction of the Project “Building Ho Chi Minh City to become a major service center of the country and the region with high-class, modern and high-value-added services” (referred to as the Project) is an urgent requirement to help the city continue to have solutions to overcome difficulties, problems and create momentum for breakthroughs in the future according to the orientations and visions of Ho Chi Minh City's economic development in general and the service industry in particular," said Mr. Dung.
Sharing about the Project, Mr. Bui Ta Hoang Vu, Director of the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City, said that through research and analysis, Ho Chi Minh City has all the necessary and sufficient conditions to develop into a major service center of the country and the region. Exploiting the city's development potential, especially high-quality service industries that bring added value, will create a stronger driving force to promote socio-economic development for both the Southeast region and the whole country.
According to experts, although the service industry of Ho Chi Minh City plays a very important role, its development is not yet commensurate with its potential and position and still contains many unsustainable factors.
Dr. Nguyen Hoai Nam, Director of the Economic Law Program, Hoa Sen University, said that in recent times, the State has had strong reforms in business conditions as well as business regulations for the service sector in the country in general and Ho Chi Minh City in particular, but they have not yet met expectations. Many regulations on service business conditions are still unreasonable. In order to create a favorable business environment for the service sector in Ho Chi Minh City, it is necessary to quickly remove bottlenecks and legal barriers that are hindering business investment activities.
In order to create a breakthrough to promote the development of Ho Chi Minh City's service industry, experts said that Ho Chi Minh City needs to focus on planning human resource development and ordering digital human resource training facilities for priority occupations related to the digital economy. Training needs to be focused on enhancing workers' skills (especially digital skills), improving the capacity of businesses as well as managers. In addition, the city needs to propose policies to promote training as well as solutions to encourage cooperation between training parties and employers./.