The Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City, on January 13, held a conference to summarize its activities in 2020, deploy the plan for 2021, and honor the typical industrial and supporting industry products in HCMC in 2020.

Vietnam has shown that there is indeed an effective way to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, even in the absence of a vaccine that can allow an economy to recover, according to Helge Berger, Assistant Director of the Asia & Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Covid-19 pandemic has continued to obstruct trade activities of the leather and footwear industry in the main export markets of Vietnam, including Europe and the US. Last year, the whole industry exported US$19.5 billion, down 11.5 percent compared to 2019. Currently, Vietnam has controlled the pandemic, so many long-term orders have returned to enterprises. However, experts predict that the difficult situation will last until the end of this year.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has decided to minimize the number of flights carrying Vietnamese citizens back home from now until the lunar New Year holiday, which falls in mid-February, as more contagious variants of coronavirus have been detected in many countries.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong, Chairman of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, assessed that the proportion of domestic revenue in the total budget collection in the period from 2016 to 2020 had increased from 62.1 percent to 71.45 percent. This shows that production and business activities remain fruitful.

The retail market of the southern largest economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City grew by 11.9 percent to VND759.7 trillion (US$32.84 billion).

According to Vietnamese trade counselors, in 2021, Vietnamese goods, in general, have a great opportunity to export to Europe, Northern Europe, the US, the Eurasian Economic Union, Japan, South Korea, and China.