Much Room for ICT Business Growth

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Tran Duc Lai said, in the past 10 years, the Government has implemented many programmes to develop IT, including IT infrastructure development, IT human resources development and e-government. Although the Vietnamese IT industry started later than regional countries, the government has implemented a number of policies to leapfrog on previous achievements. Besides, the young workforce, social stability and low input costs have created favourable conditions for Vietnam’s information technology market to develop and become a fertile land for foreign enterprises.

According to statistics, the Vietnamese information and communication technology (ICT) industry’s revenues expand more than 20 percent a year. Impressively, the software and digital content sectors recorded revenue growth of above 25 percent in 2008 and 2009, in spite of the world economic crisis. In 2010, the number of Internet users in Vietnam reached about 27 million.

 

In the past time, the scale of ICT businesses has expanded rapidly, especially small and medium enterprises. This is catching the fancy of foreign businesses and investors. World-acclaimed companies like Foxconn, Compal, Olympus and Samsung are also seeing Vietnam as a potential market. Mr Navin Shenoy, Intel Asia-Pacific General Manager, said: Intel Corp recently opened a chip assembling and testing plant in Vietnam and Intel's investment in Vietnam was aimed at tapping growth opportunities in emerging Asian markets,

However, several IT policies and mechanisms are unfavourable for business development. Vietnam must make further efforts to be hallmarked on the world IT map, said Ngo Duc Chi, Vice President of Global Cybershot. He pointed out that the telecommunications system in Vietnam is not attractive enough for foreign software investors, because the broadband is only 3 Mbps in Vietnam, while the traffic in other countries is already 30 Mbps.

 

A delegate to the conference added that import tax procedures on software manufacturing equipment and machines are still troublesome.

The Prime Minister just approved the "Converting Vietnam into ICT power” project. This is a golden opportunity for corporations, businesses, foreign investors operating in the ICT sector, said Deputy Minister Tran Duc Lai in his speech on the Vietnamese ICT market.

 

Under the government project on information technology market development, experts recommended that businesses must first increase human resources training, because the quality of the Vietnamese ICT workforce is limited. The government needs to pay more attention to human resources training and consider it a national policy. It should introduce preferential policies for human resources development to meet market demands. It also needs to complete IT system infrastructure to provide IT services nationwide, even in remote areas. The project also underscores the importance of forming powerful IT groups.

 

Deputy Minister Tran Duc Lai said that the project is the roadmap for a promising market for ICT investors. Vietnam will build approximately 15 IT parks with high incentives for investors, a rare opportunity for domestic and foreign companies to invest and develop.

 

Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Van Lang said Vietnam needs to set up powerful IT groups to lead the development, but end discrimination between State and private enterprises, or between large and small businesses.

 

Accordingly, the Ministry of Information and Communications said it expects to receive comments on mechanisms and policies to further boost the development of the Vietnamese ICT industry.