Vietnam wants to step up cooperation with countries like Belgium, which have strengths in science-technology. The Minister of Planning and Investment, Nguyen Chi Dung, has said that Belgium has substantial potential for cooperation and support Vietnam in new technologies and renewable energy, especially circuit manufacturing.
Dung led a delegation from ministries, innovation centres, research institutes, and universities to Belgium earlier this week, aiming to concretise the outcomes of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s visit to the European country in December 2022 regarding innovation cooperation.
For the 2023 – 2025 period, the two sides have agreed to implement several specific activities. These include organising innovation competitions and startup exchange programmes and activities to seek investment sources, supporting and sponsoring innovative projects in Vietnam, and sharing information about technology across all sectors.
Dung lauded the cooperation between a Brussels-based business support agency and the Vietnam National Innovation Centre (NIC). The two organisations agreed on an experience exchange to raise the innovation and startup capacity of Vietnam and the European Union (EU).
Dung suggested the agency help NIC in operations and opened its representative office at NIC Hoa Lac to step up the bilateral cooperation in innovative startup ecosystem development. The minister assigned NIC and the Vietnam Innovation Network in Europe (VINEU) to partner with the agency to come up with an exchange programme for Vietnamese startups this year. The agency, NIC and VINEU signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in innovation and startup.
At another working session with a Belgium-based microelectronics R&D innovation hub, Dung stressed that his ministry wants to promote cooperation between the hub and Vietnamese organisations and enterprises. Specifically, in semiconductor research and development, helping Vietnam join the global semiconductor supply chain.
Dung suggested the hub join hands with NIC and Vietnamese educational institutions to organise cooperation programmes for students and engineers in the semiconductor industry. An MoU on collaboration in the semiconductor industry was also inked by the hub and NIC on this occasion, under which the hub will consider building an R&D centre in the Southeast Asian nation.
The Minister also met with a Belgium-based mechanical engineering group. NIC and the group signed an MoU on this occasion, under which the Belgian group would invest in green hydrogen research and development at the Vietnamese centre and labs for biomass fuel products and develop products relating to cooling technology in power plants and industries.
Vietnam has been working with several countries to boost technological research and development. Last year, a hybrid networking event was organised to connect Vietnamese and Republic of Korean (RoK) businesses with the supply capacity and demand for technology.
The event was co-organised by the municipal Department of Science and Technology and the Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA Hanoi). Many participants joined remotely from RoK’s Incheon, Gyeonggi, Busan, and Seoul.
As OpenGov Asia reported, more than 50 networking sessions were scheduled to introduce a series of technologies such as dry ice blasting for industrial cleaning, product error detection technology to control and monitor the production process, and solutions for smart factories and machinery manufacturing.
The organisation of the networking was based on a survey of demand from more than 100 Vietnamese firms, most of whom lauded the RoK’s sci-tech products for their diversity and easy application.
