Towards sustainable development after Covid-19

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Mr. Chu Tien Dung, Chairman of HCMC Business Association (HUBA).

The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the production and business activities of enterprises, however, there were still enterprises with high growth rates. How do you evaluate these efforts of the business community and entrepreneurs?

The year 2020 is a particularly difficult year for people and businesses nationwide.In HCMCity,the business community has never operated in such harsh conditions. They have to sacrifice their economic interests to focus on pandemic prevention but they still have to ensure their existence, keep stability, and find solutions to continue to develop.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a challenge that enterprises have never encountered, causing great difficulties for businesses such as losing market connectivity leading to downsizing production, supply chain failure, liquidity loss. Many businesses have to downsize or suspend production.

However, in that challenge there are also opportunities. Some businesses, due to the specific characteristics of their business lines, know how to take advantage of opportunities to promote development, but still maintain production growth.

For example: selling online, converting products to pandemic prevention, taking advantage of this opportunity to renovate, repair and upgrade infrastructure systems to prepare for new opportunities. This shows creativity and flexibilityof a number of entrepreneurs and businesses.

What are the positive contributions of businesses and entrepreneurs to the city's economy during the pandemic?

It must be affirmed that the enterprises have accompanied the Government to maintain economic, political, social security and safety during the pandemic as well as ensuring stable employment for workers, contributing to the budget. Especially, implement pandemic prevention and control; contributing a part of budget to the pandemic prevention fund.

Only 100 enterprises were honored in 2020, they have invested VND976,956 billion of charter capital to produce business, develop the city's economy, contribute VND294,510 billion / year in revenue and profit nearly VND20,000 billion / year, contributing nearly VND12,000 billion / year to the state budget, ensuring jobs and stable income for more than 152,000 employees, contributing nearly VND1,000 billion to social security funds and programs.

In addition to, businesses corporate to form many production and business chains. In the same industry, businesses are willing to share materials. Other businesses also exchange products, reduce the rent of premises or reduce the price of input related services. This means both practical needs and a valuable feature, it is a highlight of business and business people amid the difficulties of the pandemic.

What opportunities can businesses look for after the pandemic?

There are a number of businesses that have found very good opportunities to prepare for a new business process after Covid-19, such as: the opportunity to choose and rent premises at a low price, good location, the opportunity to recruit goodemployees for training, better opportunities to negotiate with partners, opportunities to reorganize production, restructure, apply digital technology.

In parallel, after Covid-19, we have many good opportunities such as promoting the effects of signed FTAs, especially the EVFTA and CPTPP. Due to Vietnam's reputation as a safe country, the opportunity to welcome the flow of business investment cooperation from foreign enterprises; opportunities from a stable macro economy. These opportunities will help Vietnamese businesses.If they grasp them, they will grow rapidly.

How do businesses need long-term strategies to take advantage of opportunities as well as to sustainably develop?

Although there are bright spots in the dark picture, overall the economy still has many difficulties. Recently, the association conducted a small survey showing that the number of enterprises returning to normal status accounts for about 5%, the number of enterprises overcoming the difficulties initially accounts for 9%, and the serious difficulties are 40%. The number of very difficult businesses accounts for 84%.

Accordingly, each enterprise, depending on the characteristics of each industry or field, needs to carefully analyze the opportunities, challenges and forecasts of the disease as well as the general trend of the market to have solutions and organize production accordingly.

However, the general trend is technological innovation, active digital transformation, applying digital technology, retraining human resources accordingly, restructuring business models and production models more effectively, taking advantage of opportunities to expand linkages to form more sustainable and proactive business chains.