With more than 500,000 businesses, HCM City is planning to build a group of large and leading enterprises to support the city's development.

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Viet Nam (VCCI) held its first meeting of the Lunar New Year on Saturday.

The report on the assessment of the business environment in Southeast provinces by VCCI said that compared to the whole country, HCM City and six provinces in the region contributed about 32 per cent of GDP last year; 40 per cent of new foreign investment capital; 35 per cent of export turnover; 37 per cent of budget revenue; and 57 per cent of industrial parks.

This is also the area where important transport infrastructure works such as airports, seaports and border gates are concentrated, along with about 14,800 logistics service providers, accounting for 49.2 per cent of the total number of logistics enterprises of the whole country.

Also according to VCCI's assessment, localities in the region play a very important role in the Vietnamese economy, however, compared to previous years, the importance of the region is decreasing with the rise of the other economic sectors in the country.

Specifically, the proportion of contribution to export turnover and budget revenue of the region has been on a decreasing trend in recent years.

The Southeast region is facing bottlenecks in infrastructure, mechanisms and policies, which greatly hinder the economic growth of the region.

In particular, transport infrastructure has not kept up with the requirements of economic development, including roads, waterways and aviation.

Projects that are planned for inter-regional connectivity such as highways and ring roads are slow in implementation.

The development of the localities is also facing difficulties due to increasingly serious environmental pollution; the problem of solving tax procedures and land causes many troubles for businesses; and informal costs are still common in administrative procedures.

VCCI recommends that localities focus on promoting regional linkages in a comprehensive way, with the immediate priority being infrastructure development.

Speaking at the meeting, Chairman of HCM City People's Committee Phan Van Mai said that many difficulties are being removed by the authorities and it is hoped the business community will help to effectively implement projects.

At the meeting, many businesses frankly expressed their opinions, analysed the advantages, difficulties, limitations and inadequacies faced by the city and other provinces in the region and proposed many solutions to solve and contribute to the development of the city.

At the event, VCCI Chairman Pham Tan Cong said that last year ended with many outstanding achievements and results.

Notably, with economic growth reaching more than 8 per cent, Vietnamese GDP is currently ranked 37th in the world and surpassed the $400 billion mark for the first time.

The Vietnamese business community continues to grow as 150,000 new businesses established, an increase of more than 30 per cent year-on-year.

In order to better serve the development needs of businesses and localities, VCCI will focus on promoting cooperation with localities to achieve three goals, which are promoting the development of entrepreneurs and local business associations; expanding domestic and international trade and investment cooperation; building a favourable business environment, promoting local economic growth in the direction of green and sustainable development. — VNS