OVN - The OCOP program has been identified by the Prime Minister as one of the important solutions not only to increase income for communes and districts to build new rural areas, but also a solution for socio-economic growth for all provinces and cities, in which, Ho Chi Minh City is a typical example.

Ho Chi Minh City - Many solutions to improve the value of OCOP products

Implementing OCOP product development, the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City has had solutions to support science and technology transfer, credit capital for production development, and product development cooperation; support to promote the consumption of OCOP products, contribute to improve product value, and increase income of rural households in urbanized areas. 
At the end of 2019, the income of people in urbanized areas was 63,096 million VND/person/year, which increased by 58.85% compared to 2015, which means 172.32% higher than 2010. The income gap between urbanized areas and urban areas has narrowed over the years: in 2008, per capita income in urbanized areas of the city was 55.5% of that of urban areas; by 2010 it was 66.6%, in 2016 it was 71.9%, in 2019 it was 72.57%.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the One Commune One Product Program focuses on developing six key agricultural products, including: vegetables, ornamental flowers, dairy cows, pigs, brackish water shrimp, ornamental fish, belonging to 06 traditional craft villages: Thai My knitting village, Phu Hoa Dong rice paper craft village, Tan Thong Hoi bamboo blinds craft village (Cu Chi district), Xuan Thoi Son basket weaving village (Hoc Mon district), making incense sticks Le Minh Xuan (Binh Chanh district), Ly Nhon salt craft village (Can Gio); develop 04 typical products and industries of the suburban district of the city: one-sun-dried pineapple fish in Can Gio, one-sun-dried croaker in Can Gio, one-sun-dried fish in Cu Chi, bird's nest in Can Gio, and develop 01 agricultural product bearing bold regional characteristics in Can Gio district: mango product (Long Hoa). The above areas have an increasingly exciting process of urbanization and economic restructuring.
  The development and implementation of the OCOP Program is oriented to develop by Ho Chi Minh City as products of high economic value, promoting the city's comparative advantages, along with the promulgation and implementation of policies to support agricultural economic restructuring, enterprises, cooperatives and households have boldly invested in applying science and technology, applying mechanization in production and working leverage to improve output value and product quality; promote the development of traditional occupations and raise incomes for laborers.

On average, the area of agricultural production land (mainly the area for rice production) decreased by over 900-1000 hectare per year, and the average number of agro-forestry-fishery households decreased by 6.38%/year. Up to now, many businesses and farmer households have increased the application of high-tech agriculture, biotechnology, and high-quality seedlings to production, contributing to improving productivity and agricultural production value over 1 hectare. Specifically, in 2008 the production value was only 117.5 million VND/hectare/year, by 2020 it will reach 600 million VND/hectare (the highest in the country, 5 times higher than the national average, as assessed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development).

Ho Chi Minh City improves the effectiveness of the OCOP Program

After 3 years of implementation, the OCOP Program in Ho Chi Minh City has shown the suitability of a rural economic development program based on the direction of promoting the internal resources of the community to focus on developing specialty products, industries and services. advantage along the value chain. 
However, in the implementation process, there are still many shortcomings, such as: Some localities have the expression of "running for achievements", which has not been put into practice, has not yet relied on advantages and strengths of specific products; Not really interested in substantive support solutions for OCOP subjects. In particular, it is to improve the capacity of organization, administration, processing and trade of products, many products are only interested in design and packaging, not focusing on quality factors, associated with consumer tastes;Trade promotion is still fragmented, lacks synchronization, has not created outstanding and unique highlights to create the image and brand of OCOP Vietnam; The capacity of OCOP economic organizations is still modest, so the management and development of value chains associated with the local raw material areas of OCOP products face difficulties. Some localities are relying on the budget but have not effectively mobilized community resources. 
 
To improve operational efficiency, in the coming time, Ho Chi Minh City needs to focus on: Propagating and raising awareness about the OCOP Program; Organize and consolidate the entire Program implementation machine; Organizing the implementation of the OCOP Cycle flexibly and in accordance with local conditions; Science and technology support: Promote research and application of science and technology, innovate and perfect processing technology at an appropriate scale for OCOP products.

In addition, OCOP Ho Chi Minh City also needs to strengthen mechanisms and policies to support the implementation of the OCOP Program: participants receive vocational training, support to access preferential capital sources under the policy of economic restructuring, OCOP products are supported for consumption, support to attract qualified staff to work in OCOP product-trading cooperatives; mobilize budget resources and forms of cooperation from the community by forms consistent with the provisions of law.

Dr. Ly Hoang Nam (Translated by Phi Yen)