Hanoi seeks $115.5 billion to become the second S’pore

The figure was made public in the first and biggest conference on the city’s investment and development vision held on Saturday. 

The conference attracted some 600 participants including government officials, domestic and foreign enterprise representatives as well as heads of international organisations and economic experts.

The conference was held barely three months after new top leaders in Hanoi came into office. 

Such a large figure of investment will largely depend on the private and the FDI sectors – as much as |80 per cent – while the city budget will only focus on frame infrastructure projects or projects in fields |that are exclusively under state control like security or national defence, said Hanoi’s People’s Committee Chairman Nguyen Duc Chung.

“The city especially appreciates and calls on investment from the private sector under multiple models,” Chung said.

Infrastructure – one of the 1000-year-old capital’s key investment directions – will get a gigantic amount of money poured into various fields ranging from roads and the drainage network to the power grid and telecommunications in the next five years and is expected to continue on at least until 2050, according to the Hanoi urban master plan.

 

Urban master plan 

Hanoi, for the first time, has had its most detailed urban master plan to 2030 with a vision stretching to 2050, in which a city centre and five satellite towns will be fully connected and provide support to each other for collective growth and development.

The city has so far listed 52 projects under the public-private partnership (PPP) model calling out for investment in the next five years and another 43 projects to be funded by the private sector. 

They were estimated at 338.7 trillion dong ($15 billion) and 372.2 trillion dong ($16.5 billion) respectively. “There have been 70 investors lined up to invest in those projects,” Chung said.

Hanoi is setting its eyes on transforming itself into a global financial hub like Hong Kong and Singapore after 2030, said Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung at the conference.

Dung also predicted the capital to become a mega city in less than 20 years due to the current high urbanisation speed and a constant increase of the city population.

The number of city inhabitants was projected to hit about nine |million by 2030, a 40 per cent increase from 6.5 million back in 2009.

Such urban population den-|sity has forced Hanoi to divert its development focus from the city centre to its edges in order to reduce traffic jams and alleviate pressures on the centre’s infrastructure, he said.

“Edge-oriented development with five satellite towns will also open the door for investors in infrastructure, transport and real estate sectors,” he said.

Yet the minister called on the capital to act more on administrative and investment reforms so that it could “pump the financial blood to Hanoi’s enterprises as well as the whole country”.

“We have to make Hanoi a financial hub shoulder-to-shoulder with Hong Kong and Singapore,” he said.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc supported the rising role |of the private sector in the mar-|ket, showing more determination |in minimising the state-owned enterprises’ economic involve-|ment. “What the market does better, let the market do,” he said at the conference.

 

Government role 

 

“ The government instead should focus more on building institutions and restrict intervention into the economic activities by administrative means.”

As Vietnam approaches the status of a middle-income country, its access to grants and official development assistance (ODA) loans are gradually declining, said the ADB Country Director for Vietnam Eric Sidgwick.

“Borrowing pressures have begun to mount and public debt has been approaching the limits of sustainability,” he said.