Spectacular Development of Vietnam's Information and Communications

Vietnam will continue promoting the spirit of achievements in the past years. In 2009, the information and communication strategy, which will cover all aspects managed by the Ministry: post, telecom, IT, press and publication, will be given more conducive conditions for development. In 2007 and 2008, the post and telecom industries recorded marvellous growth. Over the past three years, Vietnam always has the fastest growth of telephone and tele-density in the Southeast Asia. It now has a medium tariff rate. In 2008, mobile communication service companies quickly improved the service quality, expanded their coverage and introduced many new services. In the coming years, the development of telecom enterprises will still be at high, even higher speed because the Ministry will allow the application of new technologies like Wimax and 3G.

 

In the field of the internet, the policy has been amended to facilitate the participation of all economic sectors. The management is reformed toward the orientation of consistence and transparency. The Ministry also provides clear right and responsibility of information content providers, service providers, transmission line providers and others. Therefore, the internet growth was very high in the past years. To date, nearly 25 per cent of the Vietnamese population has access to the internet. This result reaffirmed that the wide network development and the reasonable service tariff policy enabled Vietnam to grow at a faster pace than the regional average. Last year, the successful launching of the VINASAT 1 satellite is a facility to further complete the Vietnamese information infrastructure and is a condition to fulfil the information and communication plans and strategies in the coming time.

 

In 2008, the Ministry of Information and Communications had more consistent and effective instructions to the implementation plans and investments to speed up the development of the e-government. To complete the infrastructure for the e-government, in 2008, the Government assigned the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) to build a data transmission network from the central level to provincial/municipal level. The Government also has a plan to accelerate the IT application in all ministries, branches and localities in three years from 2008 to 2010. In 2008, the Government financed more than VND140 billion to ministries, branches and provinces to apply IT. Besides, a number of policies were enacted to facilitate the development of e-government. Vietnam ranked 91^st out of 182 countries in the e-government list, the highest of Vietnam since the United Nations released the ranking.

 

With our efforts, the Vietnamese IT industry has been more prosperous and affirmed its position in the economy over the past years. More importantly, we are one of 20 most attractive software offshore places in the world. This fact has brought more and more leading IT groups in the world to Vietnam. According to an incomplete statistics, the IT industry had 332 foreign-led investors from 1995 to September 2008. Of the sum, 32 per cent of projects were licenced in 2007.

 

One of the forms to attract and encourage investment in the IT industry is to build software and hi-tech parks. As of end-July 2008, Vietnam had 186 industrial parks and export processing zones covering on a total area of 45,042 ha and five software parks with 737,589 square metres. Several forms have initial successes, especially software parks and hi-tech parks in major cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Da Nang.

 

As a regulator and manager of the ICT industry, the Ministry of Information and Communications has striven to complete the policy environment, better investment regime, improve the quality and quantity hi-tech parks, develop IT human resources to meet the growing demand of the IT industry.

 

At present, the Ministry is enacting legal documents to facilitate the development of domestic enterprises in the international integration period and carrying out commitments to the WTO entry like compiling the Law on Telecom. It has also applied many polices to improve the competition and service quality. Vietnam also diversified ownership forms like privatising state-owned enterprises, stimulating all economic sectors to invest in the ICT industry, enhancing competitiveness of Vietnamese ICT companies in Vietnam and other nations. For instance, VNPT and Viettel have penetrated several foreign nations. This also helps heighten the trademarks of the Vietnamese telecom industry.

 

Vietnam has opened the telecom market to foreign companies, organisations and individuals. Many representative offices of world-leading companies have been opened in Vietnam. Many foreign companies have taken part in the Vietnamese market and operated effectively. The country has also licensed many foreign companies to set up joint ventures with the Vietnamese side to provide telecom services. The IT industry has been opened to all economic sectors and companies can set up all forms of investment from BCC (business cooperation contract) to JV (joint venture) and wholly foreign investment. Therefore, the foreign investment for ICT industry soared. This is a springboard for new success for Vietnam in the coming years.

 

Equitisation is a consistent policy of the Party and the State. The Ministry of Information and Communications is instructing the industry enterprises to follow the roadmap. To date, some 50 state-owned enterprises have gone public. Equitised enterprises are industrial, equipment production and assembly ones. The operating efficiency of equitised enterprises is higher. They provide better and diversified services for the market. Leading enterprises need careful steps. For instance, Mobifone has completed the selection of selected international consultant and corporate valuation. Expectedly, it will go public in 2009.

 

To effectively equitise State-owned enterprises, it is necessary to build a complete legal corridor but there are still shortcomings. The Ministry of Information and Communications has gradually completed the legal corridor and macro management documents like compiling and issuing the Decree on investment management in the field of post and telecom. However, several documents need time to complete and issue in the coming time.

 

The human resource is a crucial and decisive factor to the information and communication industry because this industry particularly needs a young, dynamic and quick-minded workforce to acquire modern technologies. The Ministry of Information and Communications has set up a steering committee responsible for human resource development. It also consulted international specialists, world-leading IT firms and industrial associations to seek investment, support and experience for human resource development for the information and communication industry. In the coming time, the Ministry will prioritise two goals for human resource development. It will enhance management skill training programmes for executives and cooperate with foreign firms to open training courses in technology, economic management and project management to support ICT firms. The Ministry will join hands with the Ministry of Education and Training, universities and colleges to train well- qualified IT engineers to meet the demand of domestic and foreign companies in Vietnam.

 

The Government has allowed the Ministry to build two schools: Information and Communication Management Training School and Information and Communication University. The Ministry encourage investors to introduce and propose investment for the construction and management of these schools, which can be built from State budget, ODA capital, funds from domestic and international individuals and organisations.

 

This is the quickest road to have the rich and quality human resource for the information and communication technology.