HCM City revamps trade and investment promotion with eye on double-digit growth

HCM City revamps trade and investment promotion with eye on double-digit growth

The Trade and Investment Promotion Centre of HCM City has said it will upgrade its promotional methods to enhance efficiency and practical impacts, with a focus on completing the digital trade and investment promotion ecosystem, while maintaining its role as a facilitator for businesses to expand markets and overcome difficulties.

Nguyễn Văn Dũng, vice chairman of the HCM City People’s Committee, says investment promotion activities must go deeper and closely align with investors’ needs while speaking at a conference in HCM City on January 27. — Photo courtesy of ITPC

The Trade and Investment Promotion Centre of HCM City has said it will upgrade its promotional methods to enhance efficiency and practical impacts, with a focus on completing the digital trade and investment promotion ecosystem, while maintaining its role as a facilitator for businesses to expand markets and overcome difficulties.

Speaking at a conference in HCM City on January 27 to review trade and investment promotion activities in 2025 and outline tasks for 2026, Trần Phú Lữ, its acting director, said the ITPC carried out 161 trade and investment promotion activities last year, 14.2 per cent more than planned.

These included 29 domestic and nine overseas investment promotion programmes, along with 51 trade promotion activities, helping businesses expand markets, foster investment cooperation, and support the city’s economic growth.

The ITPC convened 30 conferences and seminars attracting over 3,780 business participants, and fielded and resolved 654 enquiries and submissions from enterprises via its dialogue system, ensuring that firms remained well-informed and capable of overcoming various operational hurdles.

The city has established a 10–11 per cent annual economic growth target for 2026–30, a goal that necessitates the full mobilisation of resources for trade and investment outreach, Lữ said.

To achieve this, the ITPC has identified the diversification of its promotional toolkit, with a heavy emphasis on B2B networking, as a fundamental requirement.

Priority will be given to connecting domestic firms with international distributors, importers, cross-border e-commerce platforms, and the foreign-invested sector to ensure their integration into global supply chains.

The ITPC will intensify engagement with principal investors and leading corporations in strategic partner nations to attract capital into key projects.

Simultaneously, the centre will accelerate the promotion of products and investment opportunities via digital platforms and the adoption of new technologies.

Nguyễn Văn Dũng, vice chairman of the HCM City People’s Committee, says investment promotion activities must go deeper and closely align with investors’ needs while speaking at a conference in HCM City on January 27. — Photo courtesy of ITPC

In the domestic market, the centre intends to help businesses better penetrate a market of over 100 million consumers. It will also provide comprehensive market intelligence, particularly regarding countries with which Việt Nam has established free trade agreements.

Speaking at the event, Nguyễn Văn Dũng, vice chairman of the city People’s Committee, praised the efforts of the ITPC in 2025, attributing the city's strong socio-economic performance to effective trade and investment initiatives.

The city had achieved economic growth of 8.03 per cent and a 15.5 per cent rise in retail sales and revenues from services, and attracted over US$8.2 billion in foreign direct investment.

Following its integration with Bình Dương and Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu provinces, the city must now reconfigure its developmental landscape, Dũng said.

The goal is to evolve into a multi-centre megacity with regional and international competitiveness, he said.

Reaching double-digit economic growth in the coming years would require a fundamental shift in both the mindset and the methodology applied to trade and investment promotion.

He emphasised that enhancing the quality, efficiency, and tangible impact of these activities is a central tenet of the city's current developmental trajectory.

“Investment promotion must be sophisticated, proactive and closely aligned with investor needs, ensuring they can clearly identify the potential, competitive edges, and economic returns of choosing HCM City.”

So promotional efforts should encompass foreign, domestic and expatriate Vietnamese investors, supported by a rigorous database of multinational corporations and strategic partners to facilitate proactive engagement, he said.

For trade, Dũng urged the ITPC to further diversify its target markets, leverage FTAs more effectively and prioritise support for primary industrial goods, high-value processed items and green or circular products.

But more attention must be paid to the domestic market, he said, explaining that this includes strengthening supply chain links between HCM City and its neighbours while increasing the use of digital commerce in all promotional activities.

In addition to attracting capital, ITPC was encouraged to collaborate with business associations to facilitate outbound investment from the city.

He also urged the centre to bolster its position as a bridge between the private sector and government, enhance training to improve corporate governance and green transitions, and expedite the rollout of the digital investment promotion ecosystem. 

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