On Wednesday, representatives from the Economics and Budget Board of the Da Nang People's Council (PCl) and the Department of Planning and Investment discussed their preparations for the forthcoming 3^rd session of the PCl in its 9^th tenure of the 2016 - 2021 term.

A Tokai Viet Nam worker at a factory in Da Nang's Hoa Khanh Industrial Park (Photo: Vietnamnews)

A spokesperson for the Department said that the city’s gross regional domestic product (GRDP) is expected to have achieved a 9.04% rise year on year by the end of this year.  The production value of local services is likely to have increased by 9.2%, the industrial sector by 11.3%, and the total export turnover of goods and services by 9.6%.

The city's total tax revenue is predicted to exceed the year's target by 22.3% to hit 18,227 billion VND.  The employment rate is likely to be up 4.05%, whilst the number of poor households is expected to only account for 5.54% of the city’s total.

To date, the local authorities have granted business registration licences to over 4,000 enterprises, branches and representative offices.  Recent years have seen numerous fruitful results from ODA capital attraction, and the city is now home to 5 ODA-using projects, worth 390 million USD in total.

However, Da Nang has faced difficulties in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI).  It has so far this year attracted only 16.7 million USD from 53 FDI projects, representing 37.4% of the year’s target.

In addition, the city still lacks night-time entertainment activities for locals and visitors, and is seeing weak linking between trading activities.  The land funds for support industries have yet to meet the requirements of the local businesses involved.  Some VietGap-standard safe vegetable growing projects have not proved to be efficient.

At the event, the Board’s leader asked the Department to make every effort to control the bad debts of some local basic construction projects.  A focus should be on promoting the development of hi-tech and environmentally-friendly industries, and accelerating the infrastructure development at such new industrial parks as Hoa Nhon, Hoa Son and Hoa Ninh.  Importance should be attached to speeding up the construction progress of local key and State budget-using projects, especially those relating to dealing with environmental pollution and flooding problems.

More effective measures should be taken to enhance the investment environment, as well as to appeal for ODA capital into local infrastructure construction projects, and FDI into local support, hi-tech and environmentally-friendly ones.