Early this week, the Prime Minister issued Decision No.749/QD-TTg approving the National Digital Transformation Programme by 2025.
Under the scheme, Vietnam will experiment with a range of new technologies and models, strive to completely renovate government operations, update business processes, develop the working lifestyles of citizens, and create a safe, secure, and humane digital environment.
According to a press statement, the move aims to realise the dual goals of forming a digital government, a digital economy, and a digital society, while simultaneously establishing digital businesses that have a global competitive capacity.
Most notably, the digital economy is projected to make up some 20% of the country’s GDP in the future, with the proportion of the digital economy in each economic sector reaching at least 10%, whilst annual labour productivity will likely increase by at least 7%.
In addition to this economic transformation, Vietnam is set to be among the top 50 countries in terms of the information and communication technology development index (IDI) within the next five years, among the top 50 countries in terms of the global competitiveness index (GCI), and in the top 35 countries in terms of the global innovation index (GII).
To develop a digital society, the digital gap must be narrowed, with the schedule for change ahead to 2025 outlining that the fibre optic network infrastructure will reach out to more than 80% of households and 100% of communes nationwide.
Moreover, both 4G and 5G mobile network services and smart mobile phones will be universalised, while more than half of the country’s population will be making use of electronic forms of payment.
Vietnam will also be looking to be among the top 40 countries globally in terms of the global cybersecurity index (GCI).
To this end, there are plans to build and develop the Vietnamese broadband infrastructure, upgrade 4G mobile networks, and simultaneously roll out 5G mobile network.
Furthermore, there will be an integration of 4G and 5G technologies into mobile products, plus popularising smartphones across the country.
There will be an expansion of domestic internet connections, a push to popularise the ‘.vn’ domain name, greater development of the internet of things (IoT) infrastructure, and further integration to digitally transform traditional infrastructure.
The scheme is set to look at a number of priority areas subject to digital transformation. These include healthcare, education, finance, banking, agriculture, transportation, energy, natural resources, the environment, and industrial production.
This sets a target of turning the country into a stable and prosperous digital country over the course of the next decade.
The IT sector has been growing steadily over the years, as OpenGov reported. Vietnam’s revenue from it and allied sectors in 2019 reached US $112.5 billion, double that of 2015.
The growth rate in the 2015-19 period was more than 26%, four times higher than GDP, contributing about US $2.1 billion to the state budget last year.
IT products, especially mobile phones and computers took the first and third places among the top ten key export staples of Vietnam in 2019, with a trade surplus of US $28 billion.
In 2009-19, the average revenue growth rate of the software industry reached 17.7% a year. In 2019, the software revenue was US $5 billion.
