•  Thanh Hoa should fully tap its potential: State President

Present at the celebration were former Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu, State President Truong Tan Sang, and Secretary of the Hanoi municipal Party Committee Pham Quang Nghi along with representatives from central ministries, sectors and localities.

Sixty years ago on February 20, 1947 when the resistance war against the French had just began, late President Ho Chi Minh visited Thanh Hoa and asked the people and leaders in the province to joins hand with the country to prepare for the future in the hope that Thanh Hoa would become a model province.

Over the past 65 years, Thanh Hoa has exerted every effort to overcome difficulties to grow from a poor province to a locality with stable economic development and improved infrastructure facilities.

The provincial economy has been properly restructured and records an annual growth rate of more than 10 percent and food output of 1.6 million tonnes. The province ranks ninth in the country for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) with 42 projects worth a total of US$7 billion, while its export earnings hit US$500 million.

In his speech at the event, State President Sang congratulated the Party Committee, administration and people of Thanh Hoa on their achievements over the past 65 years, urging them to continue with the renewal process and speed up industrialization and modernization to contribute to national construction and defence.

The key task for Thanh Hoa is to focus on Party building to prevent the degradation of political ideology, ethics, and lifestyles among a section of Party members, especially leaders and managers, in order to consolidate the people’s confidence in the Party, he emphasized.

President Sang said he hopes Thanh Hoa will remain true to its tradition of heroism and overcome every difficulty and challenge to successfully implement all its assigned tasks and achieve its targets towards becoming a prosperous province by 2020, as late President Ho Chi Minh had wished.

The same day, President Sang also visited the Ham Rong Club, a popular rendezvous for retired provincial cadres.