Ho Chi Minh City Debates Three Bills Affecting 8.2 Million Residents

Three major bills are advancing through legislative committees this month that will directly affect Ho Chi Minh City residents' access to jobs, public services and school funding. The National Assembly's Standing Committee has scheduled debate on the Employment Support Act revision, the Public Transport Infrastructure Bill and the Education Decentralisation Framework for votes before the end of July, according to the published legislative calendar released on July 8.

The Employment Support Act revision expands the definition of "vocational retraining" to include digital skills programs and extends benefits to workers displaced by automation in manufacturing hubs. Ho Chi Minh City is home to over 4,200 registered factories and processing plants, with 1.2 million manufacturing workers according to the City Statistical Office's 2025 economic census. The bill's changes would allow workers laid off due to factory automation to access six months of paid retraining, up from three months under current rules. Workers in District 7, District 9 and Binh Chanh districts, where industrial parks are concentrated, would be the primary beneficiaries.

Transit Capacity and School Spending Under Scrutiny

The Public Transport Infrastructure Bill seeks to allocate 18 trillion Vietnamese dong (approximately 740 million USD) nationally for urban transit expansion over five years. Ho Chi Minh City's share, according to draft budget allocations circulated to city departments on June 22, is expected to be 3.2 trillion dong. This funding would accelerate completion of Metro Line 2 from Ben Thanh to Tham Luong and purchase 350 additional buses for routes serving outer districts. The city's current Metro Line 1, which opened in January 2020, carries roughly 280,000 passengers daily. City transport officials have said the new budget allocation would add approximately 120,000 daily passenger capacity by 2028.

The Education Decentralisation Framework, meanwhile, transfers control of 40 percent of school budgets from national to provincial management. For Ho Chi Minh City, this means the municipal government will directly control approximately 8 billion dong of the 20 billion dong annual allocation currently managed centrally for teacher salaries and classroom maintenance. Education advocates note this gives the city flexibility to address teacher shortages in outer districts like Can Gio and Cu Chi, where recruitment has lagged due to rural location premiums. The city's education department has not yet published a spending plan, but staff indicated in internal meetings on July 3 that outer-district salary supplements would be a priority.

Implementation Timelines and Unknown Details

All three bills are expected to pass in their current form, based on committee feedback summaries released July 9, though amendments remain possible during floor debate. If enacted as drafted, the Employment Support Act changes would take effect on January 1, 2027, meaning Ho Chi Minh City workers would need to register for programs through the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs' district offices by mid-November 2026. The Public Transport Infrastructure Bill, if approved, would see Ho Chi Minh City submit detailed project plans for metro and bus funding by September 30, 2026.

Local policy analysts note the bills address immediate pressures. Manufacturing job losses in the city have accelerated: the General Statistics Office recorded a 3.2 percent decline in factory employment in 2025 compared to 2024, the first annual drop in over a decade. Public transport demand, meanwhile, continues to outpace capacity. Buses and metros carried 87 million passenger trips in the first half of 2026, a 12 percent increase from the same period in 2025, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Transport Authority.

The National Assembly is scheduled to vote on all three bills during sessions from July 22 to July 26. The city government's relevant departments-Labor, Transport, and Education-are preparing implementation plans in parallel, with draft timelines due to the People's Committee by August 10.