HCM City (VNA) - HCMCity will continue to work with southwestern cities and provinces toensure an adequate supply of goods at stable prices, according to thecity Department of Industry and Trade.

Nguyen Quynh Trang,the department’s deputy director, said that a market stabilisation programme between the city and the southwestern region has helped HCM City distributorsand retailers find suppliers of quality products.

Addressing a recent conference reviewing the programme, she said thatmanufacturers have been able to find steady outlets for their products, and asa result, have invested more in expanding production andimproving product quality.

Annual conferenceshave brought together suppliers and buyers between HCM City andlocalities in the southeastern and southwestern regions. This has increasedconsumption of the two regions' goods in HCM City and exports viacity-based firms.

Trang said thedepartment will continue to cooperate with cities and provinces in the regionto exchange information about goods supply and demand, andhelp firms create production and distribution links. It willalso strengthen inspections to secure product quality.

Tran Chi Dung, headof the city's Department of Industry and Trade’s market management division,said the prices of most food and foodstuff items in the cityand the southwestern region have been stable in 2019, except for pork.

African Swine Fever(ASF) has seriously affected the local pig breeding sector,reducing pig herds by 30 percent over last year.

Pig pricesfell sharply from March to May, but from June prices gradually rose, he said.

Tran Phuong Nga,representative of Saigon Co.op, said that Saigon Co.op has participated instabilising prices of nine commodity groups, including pork products.

“In the context ofprice fluctuations of pork and pork-based products due to ASF, SaigonCo.op needs close coordination from suppliers to keep prices stable, whilemanagement agencies from central to local levels need to prevent furtherincreases, especially in the days before the Lunar New Year (Tet)holiday,” she said.

With Tet holidayapproaching, demand for many other essential products, especially pork, willincrease strongly.

Conferencedelegates agreed that besides calling on large pig farms and traders tokeep prices stable, consumers should be encouraged to changetheir habit of buying fresh pork and instead buy chilled and frozenpork, and also increase the use of poultry meat and seafood.

Trang said to ensurepork supply, from the beginning of the year to December 10, businesses inthe city imported nearly 14,000 tonnes of pork, an increase of over 150 percent compared to the same period last year.

Poultry meatsuppliers such as Ba Huan and San Ha have committed to increase supply by 30percent for Tet, she said.

Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam and the economic hub of the southern region. Accounting for 0.6 percent of Vietnam’s total land area and about 9 percent of the country’s population, it is part of the southern key economic zone, which also comprises Dong Nai, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Long An, Tay Ninh and Binh Phuoc provinces. In the southern economic hub, over 3,000 projects across all sectors are supported by foreign capital, while the number of registered enterprises has exceeded 100,000.

In 2019, the city attracted 8.3 billion USD worth of foreign investment, with its labour productivity being nearly three times that of the whole country (299.8 million VND per person, an increase of 6.8 percent over 2018).

The local gross regional domestic product (GRDP) reached more than 1.34 quadrillion VND, an 8.32 percent increase year-on-year.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the city set a target of achieving a growth rate of 8.5 percent for GRDP in 2020, with total private investment accounting for 35 percent of GRDP.

This year, HCM City also aims to have 44,000 new businesses, creating 135,000 new jobs./.