Ho Chi Minh City businesses still face many difficulties, 39% say they lack business capital

Survey results of enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City show that many enterprises lack orders, while difficulties such as increasing input material prices, declining consumer demand, lack of capital and workers... still surround them.

Many businesses in Ho Chi Minh City still face difficulties in orders, capital and declining revenue - Photo: NGOC HIEN

Ho Chi Minh City Business Association (HUBA) has just reported on the business situation in February 2025 and proposed many solutions to support businesses.

Many businesses in Ho Chi Minh City have not recovered orders yet.

According to the survey results on difficulties of enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City conducted by HUBA, up to 37% of surveyed enterprises reported a lack of new orders, 38% of enterprises reported an increase in input material prices, and 50% of enterprises faced difficulties due to declining consumer demand.

Besides, up to 39% of businesses said they lacked business capital, 20.7% of businesses had difficulty recruiting workers...

HUBA said the survey results showed that the business situation of small and medium enterprises in general showed signs of recovery, but was not really positive.

Although 69.5% of businesses had increased sales revenue, the number of decreases was also quite high at 30.4%.

Meanwhile, due to high input costs (raw materials, labor, etc.), up to 39% of businesses saw their profits decrease, which somewhat affected the business confidence of some entrepreneurs.

The bright spot in the survey is that many businesses continue to increase investment, with 33.7% increasing labor recruitment, higher than the decrease of 20.7%, this decrease mainly belongs to retail and technology units.

The survey results also show that business confidence remains quite stable, with 63% of businesses assessing the business environment as positive and 85.7% of businesses believing that the business situation will improve in the coming time.

Proposing banks to lower profits to support businesses with capital

Through the survey, businesses want policies to support credit capital, reduce interest rates, promote investment and consumption stimulus, reduce or extend taxes and fees, and quickly resolve recommendations.

HUBA said that in reality, many businesses are lacking money to pay off previous debts and supplement working capital for future operations. Therefore, HUBA proposed to extend the policy of reducing interest rates, restructuring debt repayment terms, and maintaining the debt group according to Circular No. 02/2023.

In addition, the State needs to have mechanisms and policies to develop, attract and ensure effective operation of capital sources from other financial products such as real estate investment funds, housing savings funds, real estate securitization, etc.

According to HUBA, research in family businesses shows that many business owners use personal assets to borrow consumer loans and other capital to serve business investment activities, which has led to capital deficit.

Therefore, HUBA recommends that banks have an open and preferential loan policy for family business owners, or simplify loan conditions, loan procedures, loan purposes... to help relieve difficulties for business owners and the businesses themselves.

HUBA said that recently many small and medium enterprises have fallen into difficult situations, but most banks have made high profits.

Therefore, the business community wants commercial banks to share difficulties with businesses by lowering the standard profit margin (NIM) to minimize loan interest rates.

With a stable economy, exchange rates do not fluctuate much (

Therefore, HUBA recommends reducing NIM to 2.5% to accompany and support the business community.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/doanh-nghiep-tp-hcm-con-kho-tram-be-39-noi-thieu-von-kinh-doanh-20250304203434509.htm