VND1 Trillion for Setting up National Technology Innovation Fund

 

Nguyen Quan, Minister of Science and Technology, said the fund aims to enhance innovation among Vietnamese businesses and promote the commercialisation of innovative ideas for the establishment of new products and services.

 

Half of the capital will be used to fund scientific and technological research and applications conducted by enterprises. The fund will also be used to import technologies, hire foreign experts to serve technological innovation. Other half will be used to guarantee loans or lend in the form of soft loans. In 2015, the fund will primarily finance research projects and support businesses to take on research from domestic and foreign institutes and universities, not guarantee commercial loans or provide preferential loans as initially planned.

 

Mr Hoang Van Phong, Prime Minister’s Envoy of Science and Technology, Chairman of the National Council of Science and Technology Policies, and Chairman of Management Council for the National Technology Innovation Fund, said, from January 2015, the fund selectively financed new tech research projects, advanced tech projects and high tech projects performed by companies to create new products and services; incubated technologies; piloted new products; trained scientific and technological personnel for transfer and application of new technologies; transferred, completed and innovated technologies to turn out key national products.

He added that the fund will ensure early fund for research projects and limit infeasible projects.