On Tuesday, Da Nang People’s Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh played host to a group from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), led by its senior country economist Dominic Patrick Mellor.

Mr Mellor (left) and Vice Chairman Minh

The ADB experts stressed the need to encourage more local small and medium-sized private businesses to invest into public-private partnership (PPP) projects for offering public services in the city.  Given the current modest funding from the State budget and some difficulties in attracting FDI inflows into the city, small-scale PPP projects deployed by private businesses could play an important role in promoting the city’s agricultural development.

Mr Mellor remarked that ADB has effectively implemented numerous PPP projects for offering public services in Ho Chi Minh City.  He, therefore, hoped that the city authorities would offer more legal consultancy services to local small and medium-sized private businesses to encourage more their involvement in such projects in the city as soon as possible.

In reply, Vice Chairman Minh remarked that the city authorities have always shown a lot of interest in deploying more PPP projects.  The public-private cooperation will help to ease the financial burden on the city’s budget for public investment, lower their public debts, and enhance the efficiency of their investment and State management work.

He noted that the municipal government has revealed a list of 19 local PPP projects which will be implemented in the years ahead, with a total registered capital of over 16,000 billion VND.

The city leader also said that he would like ADB to cooperate with the city’s Research Institute for Socio-Economic Development to conduct research into the efficiency of the city’s legal mechanisms and policies in order to implement more PPP projects in the city in the future.  Reports about their research results will need to be submitted to the municipal People’s Committee for consideration.