Over the past 2 decades, since it was recognised as a centrally-governed city on 1 January 1997, Da Nang has made ceaseless efforts to affirm its firm stature as one of Viet Nam’s biggest urban areas.

Effective economic restructuring with a focus on spearhead economic aspects has boosted the city's progress.

This remarkable achievement has been mainly attributed to positive results from a shift in the city’s economic structure towards the right direction and in a quick fashion, and from appeals for domestic and foreign investment into the city.

Since 1997, the city has seen the effective shifting of the economic structure more towards service and industry-construction, and the gradual reduction in the proportion of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

The total budget collections have fulfilled, and even exceeded, the annual targets during the 1997 - 2017 period.

Under the city’s economic restructuring strategies, the top priority has been given to accelerating the progress of certain sectors using the great potential of natural resources and manpower, with a focus on such spearhead economic aspects as services, tourism, information technology (IT) and software industry.

Currently, Da Nang nationally ranks 17^th in terms of the amount of FDI capital, and 8^th regarding the number of FDI projects.

To date, a total of 1.1 billion USD worth of domestic and foreign investment has been poured into tourism properties, whilst 447 million USD in industry, 300 million USD in services, and only 1.9 million USD in agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

In particular, the Furama Resort Danang opened in 1997, and it was the first 5-star resort and only one of its kind in the city at that time. Now the city boasts numerous luxury seaside holiday resorts offering high-end services, such as the InterContinental, Crown Plaza, Hyatt Regency, Fusion Maia, Pullman, Olalani and Vinpearl Luxury.

Recent years have seen a surge in the number of visitors to such attractions as the Sun World Ba Na Hills resort and the Asia Park.

Since 1997, the city has attracted 76 tourism projects totalling 12 billion USD, of which 17 are foreign-invested ones. Last year, the tourism revenue hit over 15,000 billion VND.

In his remark, Mr Le Minh Phuc, the General Director of VinaCapital Da Nang, highlighted the vital role of tourism in considerably promoting the city’s stature in the world arena, especially developing towards a once-in-a lifetime destination for holiday-makers worldwide.

Alongside the significant tourism achievements, the rapid growth of the software industry has made a considerable contribution to the city budget. 

The number of employees working for this burgeoning sector has increased to about 10,000 from only 300 ten years ago.

According to Mr Nguyen Tuan Phuong, the Director of the FPT Software Da Nang company (Fsoft Da Nang), the IT sector, has seen strong development steps in terms of revenue, business scale, human resources and service quality.

Such city-based large domestic and foreign software businesses as FPT Software, Axon Active, Gameloft, LogiGear, MagRabbit, Global Cybersoft, Enclave and Asnet, have provided software outsourcing services for the Japanese, North American, and European markets.

Over the past year, some IT companies started expanding their consumer markets into China, Singapore, Taiwan, and other Asian countries and territories.

Recent years have also seen a significant increase in the number of IT companies involved in the software and digital content sectors.