Siemens helps map out economic hub’s future

The initiative maps out the future development of the most dynamic and populated city in Vietnam. The project will be jointly executed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH and Siemens AG in close cooperation with Ho Chi Minh City’s People’s Committee, the city’s Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Hong Kong’s Infratrans Consultancy Limited,

Kicked off in 2009, the project is aimed to provide strategic advice on development priorities for the city and on required performance levels in a broad array of criteria defining the quality of urban life.

According to a Siemens statement, the city was benchmarked against world-class cities and other mainly Asian cities. The benchmark provides the background for a SWOT analysis (strength and weaknesses of today and the opportunities and threats of tomorrow), and forms the basis for proposing the most suitable direction for the future development of the city.

The initiative identifies priority action needs and prepares an immediate action plan.

“It looks into the budget needs for developing the city into a top performing metropolis by 2050, and runs through a portfolio optimisation exercise to recommend most suitable budget allocations to the main areas of infrastructure development,” the statement said.

At a recent final workshop of the Ho Chi Minh City 21 Initiative, experts recommended that about 8.1 per cent of the national gross domestic product be spent annually developing the city into the world-class transit-oriented metropolis, out of which 73 per cent would have to be covered by the public sector.

But this amount would not be spent for the city alone but also for the benefit of Vietnam’s southern region and the country as a whole. Approximately 44 per cent of the amount would be dedicated to the development of the transportation infrastructure of the entire country, in terms of inland waterways, roads, and railways.

This would facilitate that the city could live up to the needs of the country as the largest logistics hub of Vietnam and to cut the very high cost of logistics prevailing today, experts said.

“If the proposed investment portfolio would be implemented, Ho Chi Minh City could be equal with New York and Paris by 2050. It would become a candidate for the capital of the 21st century. This is not a dream, it is an option,” said the German embassy in Vietnam’s consul general Conrad Cappell.

IDS director Nguyen Trong Hoa said that the city’s authorities warmly welcomed the initiative and considered its findings highly valuable inputs for the city’s long-term and strategic development planning.

“Siemens is proud to have a fruitful and long-term business relationship with the fastest growing city in Vietnam. For us, this initiative is a way to show and implement its corporate social responsibility by offering scientific and planning assistance for developing the road map for the city to develop into a top performing, true world-class city by the middle of the century,”said Siemens Vietnam’s president Erdal Elver.