Vietnam is in the process of strong economic restructuring and perfecting institutions. However, the flip side of this “assimilation” is that some social classes will suffer disadvantages due to being unable to catch up with the trend. The poor and low-income people are the most vulnerable. Cooperation and innovation will be the key to solving that problem. That was the main content of the Inclusive Innovation Forum held by the Ministry of Planning and Investment recently in Hanoi.
According to Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, Head of the Project’s Committee, this year's forum was aimed to exchange information and experience on innovation, as well as strengthen the connection of resources to support the community of small and medium enterprises, creating products and services to benefit the poor and low-income people. The products and services would focus on three areas: traditional medicine, agricultural fisheries, and information and communication technology.
The Deputy Prime Minister highly appreciated the efforts and contributions of international organisations, agencies and individuals in the work of innovation and creativity in general, and especially the part dedicated to the low-income. He stressed that the government had always encouraged, supported and given favourable conditions for innovation activities and were eager to turn innovative ideas into practical measures able to be applied on a large scale, competitive and of a high trade value.
However, the Deputy Prime Minister also said that much research had pointed out that for nations and economies which wished to make a break, there were many different problems to face, but there is a common pattern was that most of them needed to go through innovation. If one state had a good national innovation system, it would not only develop fast but also sustainably and beneficially for the country itself, as well as its partners. Looking at the process in Vietnam, the Deputy Prime Minister said that despite great effort, the system of innovation in Vietnam had many limitations, an was unable to reach desired outcomes. In particular, in the context of globalization stronger than ever, every nation would risk lagging behind if not making the most effort to rise forward. Therefore, for this process to be not just empty talk, the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that it’s important to encourage and inspire creativity in every corners and aspects of life with the participation from the State, businesses and all society. In which the support of the State or of projects for businesses must always be in line with the ultimate goal, which was to bring innovative ideas into concrete and beneficial outcomes.
According to Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Dang Huy Dong, this was a big forum receiving the attention of more than 300 delegates representing 100 organisations, both domestically and internationally, which had been funding, technically supporting and investing in the innovation of technology and business for the benefit of low-income people; 70 research institutes and universities together with 100 businesses who had innovative and creative projects in the field of traditional medicine, agricultural fisheries, information technology and communications. According to statistics, up to 2013, Vietnam had nearly 1.8 million poor households and 1.4 million near-poor households. Therefore, improving the living standards of the people remained a key task. Considering the current situation of Vietnam's economy as well as learning from other countries’ experiences, the main force in promoting innovation was enterprises, of which small and medium enterprises played an important role.
Fortunately, this sector of enterprises currently took up a large proportion of up to 97 percent of the whole nation’s number of business, creating more than 1 million jobs annually, contributing 40 percent to GDP, and playing an important role in poverty alleviation of economic development. But besides that, the innovation of Vietnam remained quite limited. Specifically, the innovation rate of Vietnamese firms remained very low, only about ten percent of businesses tried to apply or applied inventions in the last three years. There were very few small and medium businesses having licensed patents, and investment of Vietnamese businesses in technological innovation was only 0.2 to 0.3 per total revenue, while in India this figure was 5 percent, and in China, 10 percent.
According to Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Tran Quoc Khanh, to promote innovation, it’s crucial to do developmental research, to encourage innovative ideas, besides, the ideas should be screened carefully to make sure they have commercial value. In the framework of the project, the fields given preferential treatment included traditional medicine, fisheries, agriculture, information technology and communications.
Anh Phuong
Vietnamese
