On 12 August 2022, the National Forum on Development of Vietnamese Digital Enterprises (VFTE 2022) was held in Hanoi. VFTE 2022 is an annual program hosted by Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC). This event creates a space for meetings and exchanges between technology enterprises and State management agencies, in order to identify and propose solutions to solve problems regarding the development of digital technology enterprises in Vietnam.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Forum, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Pham Duc Long said that, with the first VFTE held in 2019, Vietnamese digital technology business community has entered a new stage, which is Make in Vietnam – "Researched in Vietnam, created in Vietnam, made in Vietnam".

"VFTE 2022 is an opportunity for enterprises to focus on discussing and proposing solutions to develop a sustainable Vietnamese digital technology community, master the domestic market and enhance Vietnam's values in the global value chain", said Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long.

Opportunities for Vietnamese digital technology enterprises

To start the forum's discussion on digital economy development, Mr. Nguyen Trung Chinh, President of CMC Corporation gave a presentation on the topic of "Cloud computing - Opportunities for Vietnam to become a digital economy infrastructure and service hub of the Asia-Pacific region".

The president of CMC believed that, in order to develop the digital economy in Vietnam, it is necessary to see Cloud computing as an essential infrastructure. Therefore, the highest priority and incentives in terms of land, tax, capital, procedures, etc. must be available for enterprises investing in this field. In addition, there should be policies to encourage the consumption of domestic products and services, possibly in the form of order to use. The development of digital human resources also needs policies to encourage training institutions to promote digital training and build digital universities to solve the problem of high quality human resources.

President of CMC Corporation shares his perspective on the digital economy.

"It is necessary to have attractive policies for domestic and foreign enterprises to actively invest in digital economy infrastructure, build a digital application platform, and provide digital services to make Vietnam a global digital service hub," said CMC President.

Of the 12 selected economies in the Asia-Pacific region, including Vietnam, only 30% of the digital economy's potentials are successfully exploited in 2021.

Specifically, the size of digital economy is 586 billion USD in 2021 and there are still 1.4 trillion USD of untapped potential benefits. In Vietnam, the digital economy contributes to 10% of GDP, and it is predicted that by 2030, its value will reach 3 trillion USD.

Currently, Vietnam as a young country with good technology capacity and education has formed a technology ecosystem. Also, there are many policies to promote the development of the digital economy. However, Vietnam's readiness index is still at a potential level, said Mr. Nguyen Trung Chinh.

The mission of technology industry is to pave the way

At the Forum, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said that it has been clearly determined that for Vietnam to become a developed industrial country and have a peaceful, safe, cultural life and a modern production before its 100^th anniversary of establishment (2045), a lot of extraordinary things must be done, and special solutions as well as fierce aspirations are also needed.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam has high expectations for digital technology enterprises.

To do that, the Deputy Prime Minister outlined three issues to be solved. The first is institutional change. The fact is that after so many decrees, we still have not completed any information technology projects. As CMC has suggested, without institutional change, we will just keep talking and not developing.

Second, we must focus more on human resources. This story is not new to the IT industry; however, if the same training regulations are maintained as before, we will not be able to have a million people in the IT force.

The third is to discovery something new with room for development. Currently, people are having high expectation for digital transformation and information technology, because if the focus is fixed on developing industry, agriculture and services instead of the new spearheads of the world, including IT, it is impossible to reach the growth rate of 7% a year. "So, the people sitting here belong to a special force in the fight against poverty," the Deputy Prime Minister stressed.

The Forum attracts a large number of experts and business representatives

With this year's theme of "Sustainable growth and enhancement of Vietnam's values in the global value chain", VFTE 2022 aims to promote the implementation of the National Digital Transformation Program with the dual goals: Synchronously developing three pillars of digital government, digital economy and digital society to promote the process of industrialization and modernization of the country; and building Vietnamese digital technology enterprises with global competitiveness.