Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) stands ready to share experience with Ho Chi Minh City to develop the southern business hub of Vietnam into an international financial center, among other cooperation activities, HKSAR Chief Executive Lee Ka-chiu has said.

The Hong Kong leader made the statement at a meeting with chairman of the city’s administration Phan Van Mai on Friday, as part of his three-day visit to Vietnam at the invitation of Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang.

Chairman Mai told his guest that there remains great potential for further cooperation between Hong Kong and Vietnam in general and Ho Chi Minh City in particular.

The city welcomes Hong Kong businesses to invest in the priority fields such as innovation, startup, investment, trade, tourism, healthcare, logistics, infrastructure, and finance and currency, Mai said.  

In particular, he expressed his desire to cooperate with and learn from Hong Kong in the process of building Ho Chi Minh City into an international financial center in the near future.

Since the early 2000s, Ho Chi Minh City has determined financial market development as one of the priority areas in its economic restructuring, and from the determination, the idea of building the city into an international financial center was nurtured, news site VnExpress cited Mai.

“We hope that the two sides will strengthen cooperation in this field. Hong Kong businesses can share solutions and practical experiences in the effective development roadmap of a regional and world financial center,” Mai told the Hong Kong leader.

The city always facilitates foreign investors and has mechanisms to promptly remove their bottlenecks in their business operations, Vietnamnet online newspaper cited the city’s chairman.

Lee told Mai that Hong Kong, one of the world’s largest financial hubs, has a lot of experience in building an international financial center that may open up many business and investment opportunities. 

The HKSAR is willing to exchange and share experiences with the city about this issue, Lee said and expressed his belief that Ho Chi Minh City will soon achieve its goal of becoming an international financial center in the future.

Expressing his great impression with the development of Ho Chi Minh City during his first visit to the metropolis as Chief Executive of the HKSAR, Lee said Hong Kong will promote cooperation with Ho Chi Minh City in many other fields besides finance.

Last year, the two-way trade between Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City reached US$4 billion, Mai said and called for more efforts from the two sides to boost the figure to $5 billion in 2025.  

Currently, Hong Kong ranks eighth out of 125 countries and territories investing in the city, Mai added.

At the press conference following the talks, the Hong Kong leader affirmed that his visit to Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City had achieved many good results and laid a solid foundation for future cooperation in various fields, including finance.

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