Vietnam’s provinces and cities exert efforts to revive economic growth

The government’s resolution on flexible and safe adaptation to COVID-19 has helped provinces and cities in fighting the pandemic in a flexible manner while taking proactive measures to revive and promote economic growth.

Yen Phong Industrial Park in Bac Ninh Province (Photo: Thai Son)
Yen Phong Industrial Park in Bac Ninh Province (Photo: Thai Son)

In the new period, the northern province of Quang Ninh has introduced bold measures to attract investment and held dialogues with the business community to address their difficulties. The province has also established a special working group to accelerate the progress of key projects.

Recently Quang Ninh commenced construction on four key projects, namely the Van Ninh General Port in Mong Cai, the Quang Ninh LNG power plant in Cam Pha, a green urban complex in Ha Long and Quang Yen, and a golf course in Dong Trieu. Such projects are part of the province’s efforts to create modern and synchronised technical and services infrastructure so as to create room for long-term and sustainable development.

In neighbouring Hai Phong, linking the task of realising the dual goals of virus containment and economic growth with the responsibility of each member in leadership has brought about substantive results.

According to its Chairman Nguyen Van Tung, the city has maintained production and business activities and achieved strong growth thanks to its persistence in strictly preventing the spread of COVID-19 while promoting economic development.

The city is actively implementing the plan of flexibly and safely adapting to the pandemic, in which road, rail, waterway and air transport activities have been resumed.

Since mid-July 2021, Bac Ninh Province has established a rapid response team, headed by its Deputy Chairman Vuong Quoc Tuan, to support enterprises with the goal of providing the best advice, dealing with problems in the quickest way and fighting the pandemic in the safest way.

Tuan said the group has promptly addressed the difficulties facing the people and provided timely support to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the activities of enterprises and household businesses in the province.

When Bac Giang Province decided to resume the operation of industrial parks after a period of suspension due to COVID-19, it quickly established a working group to revive production, with a focus on guiding enterprises to create safe production models. Thanks to such efforts, disruptions to supply chains were avoided and industrial parks have returned to normal activity after two months.

According to the General Statistics Office, Vietnam’s economic performance in October and the first ten months of 2021 has seen improvement, with ten-month industrial production up 3.3% and exports up 17.3% over the same period last year.

With a host of measures on flexible adaptation to COVID-19, the index of industrial production in northern provinces and cities rose sharply in the January-October period, with Quang Ninh up 9.68%, Hai Phong 19.22%, Bac Giang 13.1% and Bac Ninh 10.48%.

Hai Phong is striving to achieve economic growth of 12.5% in 2021 while Quang Ninh is also aiming for a growth rate of 10.01%.

According to Bac Ninh Secretary Dao Hong Lan, the province is striving to realise socio-economic targets for 2021 by various measures, including stepping up vaccination, enhancing the effectiveness of public investment, addressing the difficulties facing enterprises, and attracting investment to industrial parks, ecotourism zones and urban areas.

In the meantime, Quang Ninh still identifies coal, manufacturing, foreign investment, construction, services and tourism, the marine economy and logistics as the key pillars of growth for the remainder of the year.

The province will also focus on enhancing the quality of human resources and accelerating site clearance and the planning of new industrial parks as drivers to stimulate economic growth in the coming years.