IT dreams are slowly becoming a reality
Vietnam is rapidly moving towards fulfilling its dream of becoming a global information technology power. The nation is to execute nine key information and communication technology projects to become a top 10 ICT country by 2020.
The first draft of the prime ministerial decision on programme on information and communication technology (lCT) industry development to 2015 and vision to 2020 has been made available for lodging motions. The draft is compiled by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC).
The projects include creating an ICT market in Vietnam, improving Vietnam’s IT enterprises’ competitiveness, retraining 50,000 IT engineers until 2015 and investing in key IT products.
Half of the projects’ funding will come from the state budget and the remainder from Vietnam National Post and Telecommunications (VNPT) Group and Viettel Group. The two groups are the only two businesses participating in the last project for promoting production of peripheral devices for IT and telecom products. The other project developers are all ministries and state agencies.
Nguyen Manh Hung, deputy general director of Viettel, said the group had set an ambitious plan for the next 10 years including telecom devices production with revenue of around $1 billion. Viettel is expanding into the production of fixed phones, USBs for 3G connections, mobile handsets and laptops. It sets a target to have a total market size of 500 million people by 2015and one billion people by 2020.
Viettel is running its first trial 100 USB for connecting with the 3G network and selling its fixed phones produced by its South Korea partners.
“We will focus on research and design work in the production chain and we will soon enter the mass production due to the demand from market both domestic and overseas,” said Hung.
Viettel’s estimation read that the country currently had six million farmer households needing fixed phones, 15 million users for 2G handsets and 61 million users for 3G handsets. Meanwhile, demand from overseas markets such as Haiti, Laos, Cambodia and Mozambique is estimated to be huge.
“We need incentive policies from the government on overseas investment in order to promote telecom services and telecom equipment productions,” said Hung.
A Vietnam Electronics Association report said that local electronics enterprises’ exports accounted for only 1 percent of the country’s electronics exports during the past 10 years.
“There has been no such big investments from the state budget in electronics production in the past 10 years and we need the winds of change,” said association general secretary Tran Quang Hung.
The MIC report also made clear that ICT industry posted the highest annual growth rate of 20-25 percent during the past 10 years in Vietnam, leaving behind the second industry of food processing industry with rate of 11.7 percent. Total ICT revenue in Vietnam was around $6.2 billion in 2009.
Hardware production revenue was around $4.68 billion in 2009, eight-fold higher than 2000. Software production revenue was also IS-fold higher than the figure in 2000, reaching $880 million in 2009. – VIR
Tags: Vietnam IT industry, Vietnam IT sector