Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has requested the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) to enhance ICT rankings as it is the foundation of other fields, including digital economy.Phuc made the statement at a conference organized by the MIC in Hanoi on January 15 to deploy its tasks in 2019.
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc visits Vingroup's smartphone exhibition. Photo: VGP
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He added that the MIC has focused on the fields of technology, industry and post and telecommunications services, information technology, making a great contribution to the state budget. The field creates many jobs and a number of large businesses with international brands and rankings.
However, there remains some shortcomings, such as the AVG case, which is a serious incident and has slowed down the industry’s development and resulted in the falling of many executives. The ministry should consider this an expensive lesson, Phuc stressed.
Mobile network operator MobiFone in January 2016 announced the acquisition of a 95% stake of pay TV service provider An Vien Group (AVG) for an inflated price of VND8.89 trillion (US$380 million), causing a loss of some VND7 trillion (US$299 million) to the state budget.
The PM also acknowledged that Vietnam's ICT ranking is still low, even tending to drop. ICT is supposed to be a leading field of technology, but its growth rate in recent years has slowed down.
Phuc said the role of some departments of the ministry is weak and expressed his concern about the management of social networks, which is still inadequate.
The PM agreed that the MIC can submit to the Vietnamese government plans on sharing database, piloting e-wallet for every day transactions, first of all in telecommunications.
The PM affirmed that digital economy and data economy are the future of the entire economy. The boom of information technology will contribute to changing the thinking, policy activities, creating an unprecedented short-term expectation for Vietnam.
