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HCM City welcomes US investment
The southern metropolis will warmly welcome US investment and make every possible effort to facilitate US investors in the fields necessary to speed up the city’s socio-economic growth, according to a senior official of HCM City.
"Ties between Viet Nam and the US have flourished in all facets since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations and more and more US companies are coming to Viet Nam, particularly to HCM City, to do business," said the city’s People’ s Committee Chairman Le Hoang Quan.
Quan made the statement as he received American Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who is on a working visit to Viet Nam until Sunday.
Quan said the city was calling for more investment in infrastructure development, education and training, the environment as well as public healthcare and the high-tech sector.
"Among these, education and infrastructure are the two areas of highest potential for US investors to pour money into as the city’s infrastructure facilities are becoming increasingly overloaded," he said.
Quan said Viet Nam was forecast to be among the top 10 countries adversely affected by rising sea levels in the next decade, a problem which requires high-tech solutions to tackle.
Lack of capital to develop infrastructure is another issue challenging the city despite drastic efforts to mobilise funds from different sources, such as official development assistance and loans from the private sector.
According to Quan, the city is currently carrying out many extensive traffic projects on developing the metro, elevated skyway, monorail and ring road system to house a booming population.
But he also stressed that the weak soil foundation was a real problem for developing the city’s metro system because a more thorough study was needed and the cost would be high.
"The city is also building a highway from HCM City to Long Thanh- Dau Giay in the southern province of Dong Nai and then on to Da Lat resort city in Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands)," Quan said.
"We will warmly welcome all US investors who come to discuss co-operation opportunities in infrastructure development."
He said the city had drafted a master plan on infrastructure development until 2015 and many large projects were pending the Government’ s approval.
With a high density of housing in the city’s downtown area, Quan said municipal authorities were considering developing its suburbs and would relocate people there, adding that the city could learn a lot from the experiences of the US in building road systems, first from the outskirts and then to the centre.
"These are challenges the city is coping with," he said. "Once traffic jams and infrastructure issues are resolved, the city will draw a stronger inflow of foreign investment."
For his part, the US Deputy Secretary of State showed his keen interest in co-operation in various fields, especially education.
"An education task force from Viet Nam and the US will gather soon to discuss co-operation prospects in education," he said.
The US official hailed Quan’s initiative to open a Viet Nam-US university next year and hoped more Vietnamese students would go to the US for study.
At present there are more than 6,000 Vietnamese students at US schools, over half of which come from HCM City, according to the US official.
The Deputy Secretary of State, who served in the American War in Viet Nam from May 1964 to Jan 1968, is on his first-ever visit to Viet Nam.
VNN
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