The Ministry of Information and Communications organised a workshop on Vietnamese-branded IT products and services in Ho Chi Minh City on 7 December.

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

According to the Department of Information Technology, Viet Nam’s IT sector groups 24,000 businesses in total, which together generate jobs for over 700,000 personnel and contribute 34 trillion VND (1.49 billion USD) in tax to the State budget.

There are more than 2,700 companies working in the digital content industry, which have seen favourable growth conditions in Viet Nam thanks to the local young workforce, competitive labour cost, increasing number of smart phone users, and widespread internet connection.

To Thi Thu Huong, the Deputy Head of the department, said the digital content industry makes up just a small part in total revenue of the IT sector.  It houses large amount of firms but most of them have small and medium scale, she added, noting that there are not many Vietnamese – branded IT products capable of winning a market share.

Pham Thi Ly, head of the Centre for Development and Integration, said enterprises must defend themselves against fake products, suggesting that transparent origin information can boost competitiveness of Vietnamese products amid integration.

Le Quang Tu Do, the Head of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, the Ministry of Information and Communications, said monitoring the operation of enterprises operating domestically is tighter than that of firms working across borders.  He said the situation might reduce competiveness capacity of domestic businesses.

Do said support policy is needed to help Vietnamese companies build brands to be able to compete against those from foreign countries, which are now more popular in the Vietnamese market.

(Source: VNA)