Identified as the driving force of Central Viet Nam, Da Nang is expected to make a significant contribution to Viet Nam's process of escaping this middle-income trap. Given this orientation, Da Nang's economic restructuring should be given more attention in the coming time.

Engineers are working at the Da Nang High Industrial Park

Over recent years, Da Nang has continuously re-arranged its production structure, restructured the economy towards focusing on developing high-quality service and tourism industries; hi-tech industry and information technology (IT); urban agriculture, hi-tech agriculture.

Accordingly, tourism services have developed dramatically, becoming a spearhead and important economic sector, initially turning Da Nang into a major tourist destination of Central Viet Nam and the country as a whole with the hosting of renowned events of international stature, thereby making positive contributions to the city’s socio-economic development.

Also, showing off fast-growing commercial services, the city is a major shopping, distribution, and transshipment centre for goods and services in the region.

The development of IT and hi-tech industries is on right track. Sea-based economy and seaports have developed, and similarly, technical infrastructure in service of marine economy has been exploited effectively.

The agricultural sector has grown quite stably in the direction of increasing added values, focusing on developing organic products in service for tourism and urban areas, focusing on hi-tech agriculture, a necessary step to accomplish the goal of building new-style rural areas.

For the time being, the service sector accounts for 65% of Da Nang economic structure whereas but the market for local key service industries such as accommodation and catering, travel and commercial services are heavily dependent on the international visitor market.

In the context of growing globalisation and with tourism being identified as the leading economic spearhead, dependence on the international tourist market is inevitable. However, transforming the economic structure into some industries or developing some services less dependent on external markets is important for improving the resilience of the service sector, and the economy as a whole.

Meanwhile, the industry-construction sector has tended to gradually shrink its share in the economy over recent years because the city has focused most of its resources on developing tourism and services.

The Da Nang administration has released a policy of developing hi-tech agricultural areas and issued policies support investment, but it still faces many difficulties in the implementation process, and so does the modernisation of fisheries.

Therefore, in order to accelerate the process of economic restructuring to achieve higher growth quality, the city needs to come up with synchronous solutions to promote the transformation of the growth model from breadth to depth. In particular, it is necessary to focus on developing human resources, ensuring labour supplies in terms of both quantity and quality of human resources.

Along with that, it is a need to improve the operational efficiency of the existing startup ecosystem and further promote the start-up movement across the region to incubate new seeds for a new development period.

Heed is also paid to attracting strategic investors capable of spreading technology and promoting the development of domestic enterprises as a solution to improve local social labor productivity.
Also, the disbursement of public investment capital and the efficiency of public investment capital should be promoted as the prime capital of the economy, in order to better mobilise other social resources for economic development.

Reporting by QUOC TOAN - Translating by A.THU