Industry experts say that Vietnam has a high potential for fast digital economic development and digital transformation trend across several sectors. The government has set a target to post a 31% growth in gross merchandise value (GMV) from US$ 23 billion in 2022 to US$49 billion in 2025, the highest growth in the region.
Data from the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) showed that the ICT economy’s revenue reached an estimated US$ 148 billion in 2022, representing a year-on-year increase of 8.7%. The contribution of the digital economy to the national GDP in 2022 accounted for about 14.26% of the total, with 7.18% contributed by the ICT digital economy.
The information and communications sector has implemented a national digital transformation scheme aiming to develop the digital government, economy, and society and form resilient digital technology enterprises. According to the MIC’s Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society, the scale of Vietnam’s digital economy has recorded growth in the ICT digital economy, platform digital economy, and sectoral digital economy.
IT services contributed the most to the digital economy, accounting for about 30% of the total value. This was followed by e-commerce (14.3%) and hardware production (12.83%). Meanwhile, the digital content field recorded the strongest growth, up nearly 104% compared to the first quarter of 2022.
Last year, Vietnamese digital businesses made inroads into foreign markets, including developed countries such as the United States and Japan. The total revenue of the state-run Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) in foreign markets hit US$ 3 billion.
MIC has developed a strategy for digital technology industry development to 2025 with a vision for 2030. In March 2022, the Ministry announced 35 national digital platforms serving digital transformation and the development of digital government, economy, and society, including 21 developed by domestic digital technology enterprises. These have contributed to facilitating state management and public services.
The country has focused on upgrading digital infrastructure, smartphones, broadband Internet, and cloud computing. According to MIC Minister, Nguyen Manh Hung, ministries, sectors, and localities have issued digital transformation programmes. As many as 500 million accounts have been registered so far for using made-in-Vietnam digital platforms.
Meanwhile, the communication service market generated around VN 138,000 billion (US$ 5.8 billion) in 2022, an increase of 1.6% compared to 2021. As OpenGov Asia reported, data showed that in 2022, the telecommunications industry paid roughly VN 48,000 billion (US$ 2 billion) to the state budget, and the industry saw an increase in state budget payments of 9.8% against 2021.
Profit after tax of the telecommunications industry is estimated at VN 44,500 billion (US$ 1.8 billion), up 3.8% compared to 2021. As of December 2022, the rate of mobile phone subscribers and smartphone users in Vietnam reached 75.8%. Moreover, Vietnam currently has 72.1 million internet users, of which the percentage of households using fibre optic cable is estimated at 74.5%, up 11% over the same period. The number of fixed broadband subscribers as of December 2022 was estimated at 21.5 subscribers over 100 people, up 9.7% over the same period, nearly reaching the 2022 plan target of 22 subscribers per 100 people.
