HCM City (VNA) – Chairmanof the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong has directedsustainably developing manufacturing firms in both quantity and quality in thecity’s goal of achieving 500,000 businesses by 2020.

During a local meeting on May 29,Phong said the city has so far recorded 308,977 firms. Among newly-registeredones, 42.6 percent were in real estate, 20.7 percent in trade-services, and 15percent in construction.

Since the beginning of this year,15,492 enterprises have been licensed with a total registered investment of193,784 billion VND (8.4 billion USD), up 10.4 percent in volume and 54.2percent in value. Up to 22,086 others applied for new business registration,raising the total newly-registered and additional capital to 453,569 billionVND (19.72 billion USD), or a 2.4-fold increase.

Su Ngoc Anh, Director of themunicipal Department of Planning and Investment, said the municipal authoritiesare working with districts and communes to encourage business households toswitch to businesses. Since early this year, as many as 413 households have changedtheir status to businesses.

Permanent Vice Chairman of themunicipal People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem said the city has worked with fivedistricts and communes on this regard and will continue discussing with 24others in June.

The city is focusing ondeveloping key industries instead of running after business number. In thefirst five months of this year, the industrial development index rose 7.29percent year-on-year, including mechanical engineering (19.35 percent),electronics-information technology (12.1 percent).

According to Anh, in early thisyear, the city issued a decision on support for enterprises working in the manufacturingand support industries. Furthermore, a database on support industry,particularly mechanical engineering firms, has been built, making it easier forinformation search.

Since 2017, the city has licensed283 foreign-invested projects worth 341 million USD, mostly from the Republicof Korea (27.8 percent), followed by Malaysia (13.2 percent) and Singapore(11.7 percent). Notably, manufacturing-processing accounts for 35.9 percentwhile wholesale and retail makes up 27.1 percent, information andcommunications (16.2 percent), real estate (11.8 percent).

Phong said major Korean firmshave chosen the city as a long-term business destination. Meanwhile, those fromJapan, Singapore and Malaysia may raise their capital.

In January-May, the city earned14 billion USD from exports, up 17.1 percent annually. -VNA