Vietnam has announced its intentions to have 10 localities with a revenue of more than US$1 billion each from the information and technology (IT) sector by the year 2025.
The target was set at a conference to review IT development programme in 2015-2020 in the southern region held in Tien Giang Province early this week.
Phan Tam, deputy minister of Information and Communications, said the IT, electronics and telecom sector has seen rapid development with extremely important achievements in the past five years.
In 2019, Vietnam’s revenue from the IT, electronics, and telecommunications sector reached US$112.5 billion, doubling that of 2015. The sector’s growth rate showed an impressive 26 percent in the four year period, being four times higher than the GDP, contributing VND53 trillion (US$2.1 billion) to the nation’s budget in 2019. It also created more than a million jobs for people as well.
Tam said in 2009-2019, the average revenue growth rate of the software industry reached 17.7 percent a year. In 2019, the software revenue was US$5 billion.
However, the sector has also seen shortcomings as it has depended on FDI firms. Revenue of FDI companies in the IT sector accounted for up to 98 percent of the total export revenue.
Despite having a large number of domestic enterprises, the majority of Vietnam’s businesses are SMEs, thus limiting their ability to compete on the international stage. Only a handful have the clout and finances to remain competitive overseas, while the vast majority are mainly entrusted with services and assembly work. Tam added that domestic enterprises only contribute to about 10 percent of the industry’s total revenue.
Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, deputy head of the ministry’s Information and Technology Department, said the IT development programme aimed to make Vietnam’s IT industry a big economic sector with a rapid and sustainable growth rate based on achievements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The success of such a sector would help to drive Vietnams digitalisation and the digital transformation of businesses that are still in the process of reforming.
Accordingly, the revenue growth of the sector would be double the country’s GDP growth, taking the lead among industries with high export value.
Under the programme, the country would have 50,000 IT and telecom firms. Of which, 10 big businesses would act as leaders with revenue scale of over US$1 billion and having the ability to compete internationally.
Further development of the IT sector is likely to attract more human resources towards the industry, thus accelerating its development further.
