Hanoi (VNA) - There is a lot of room for growth for Vietnam in developing its supply chain and being part of the global semiconductor designing and manufacturing sector in the future, said Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Hanoi Adam Sitkoff.
Sitkoff made the remark in a recent interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency about the development potential of the semiconductor industry in Vietnam and the two countries’ cooperation in this area.
Following is the full text of the interview:
Reporter: The US and Vietnam have elevated ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership and agreed to forge deeper cooperation in a wide range of areas, especially semiconductor. What does the US find most attractive about Vietnam as part of a semiconductor supply chain and a market?
Adam Sitkoff: First I’ll start by saying that how great it is that the two countries did upgrade their relationship. It has been quite a fast path over the last 29 or 30 years. This year we're celebrating 30 years of US-Vietnam trade and investment normalisation, and next year is the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Now we see that the two countries are close friends in all kinds of areas from health and working on diseases prevention to fighting crime and terrorism to cooperating in economics and education.
So I think all that is really positive, and we're going to see that positive relationship continue. Semiconductor is something that both countries and both governments want to work on together. The US government sees that Vietnam has been successful in many areas economically, and they figure that the next phase of economic competitiveness is to try to attract that semiconductor supply chain here into Vietnam. It's not going to be easy. It takes a lot of high-skilled people and a lot of money. But I think that there are a lot of advantages in Vietnam and this is something that we look forward to working on.
Reporter: The Biden administration has recently granted billions of dollars to big tech companies like Intel in an effort to rebuild the semiconductor industry in the US. Does that mean the US will not invest much in building up and facilitating semiconductor manufacturing outside the country?
Adam Sitkoff: No, I don’t think it means that. The semiconductor industry and its supply chain have a global impact, as semiconductors are used in almost every product today. There are also a lot of different levels of semiconductor development, ranging from the most high-tech to the most complicated level, most of which has been produced in Taiwan (China) right now. Vietnam has a lot of chip assembly that is done in Ho Chi Minh City for example.
The United States sees the importance of the semiconductor industry for national security, which led to the passage of the US Chips Act and the provision of funding to companies like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited) to encourage development and manufacturing within the US. Those amounts sound like a lot of money, but for the semiconductor industry, it is not really significant. Large foundry operations in the US can cost tens of billions of dollars.
In other words, while the US government supports bringing semiconductor manufacturing to the country, it does not exclude other countries like Vietnam from participating in the global supply chain. There is a lot of room for growth for Vietnam in developing its supply chain and being part of the global semiconductor designing and manufacturing sector in the future. So we expect to see companies try to do more in Vietnam in the future.
Reporter: How can the US support Vietnam to develop the semiconductor industry? How do you evaluate the willingness of the US’s semiconductor enterprises to cooperate with and assist Vietnam to develop the industry?
Adam Sitkoff: The semiconductor sector requires highly skilled people that are skilled in very specific areas. It takes a lot of education and training. There is a shortage of such workers in both the US and Vietnam. I think the Vietnamese government has already been looking at how it can change and reform the curriculum in the country to train more highly skilled engineers. The US government has money to spend here in Vietnam, also on helping raise that skill and education level, and work with universities, training facilities, and the Vietnamese government on how to get Vietnamese engineers up to that next level. I think the US companies and global companies also have a role to play in that partnership.
However, it is important to recognise that simply injecting large sums of money into the problem is not the sole solution. If Vietnam wants to put a priority on developing the semiconductor industry, the Vietnamese government needs to make sure that it’s doing what it can to produce the type of Vietnamese people that the companies want to hire to do this type of work. So it is sometimes a lot more difficult than just training accountants or people that work making shoes in a factory or something like that. Vietnam has got a lot of engineers but Vietnam doesn’t have enough of this type of highly-skilled engineers even though Vietnamese people are very smart and they learn very quickly, so I think with appropriate training programmes, Vietnamese people can do these jobs and it’s what we want to see in the future.
Reporter: Does AmCham have any plans to connect American semiconductor businesses to Vietnamese partners this year or in the near future?
Adam Sitkoff: So this year, I would answer that by saying we're not really sure about that yet. We already had a lot of activity last year. Again, you remember, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh went to New York and other places in the US, after President Joe Biden's visit to Vietnam in September 2023. The Vietnamese government has been meeting regularly with representatives of industries in the semiconductor supply chain. Our mission at AmCham is to increase trade investment between the US and Vietnam. So, we certainly recognise that there are a lot of opportunities here. And we work with companies on trying to put them together to see what's possible in Vietnam, and how we can be a part of this new education training that needs to happen.
We actively participate in numerous advocacy efforts alongside our government partners to foster a business and investment climate that welcomes industries like semiconductor. This endeavour encompasses various aspects, including facilitating the free flow of data, protecting intellectual property rights, and establishing necessary physical infrastructure. An indispensable component of this infrastructure is a stable and reliable energy supply because you can’t develop a semiconductor supply chain in Vietnam without stable and certain energy supplies. However, we still encounter ongoing challenges in this regard.
Vietnam is a fast-growing country, and we expect that to continue in the future. To ensure sustained progress, it is crucial that our government partners prioritise advancing the infrastructure that fuels this growth. Consequently, we actively engage in shaping legislation, decrees, regulations, and circulars. We collaborate with ministries, the National Assembly, and various agencies, seeing our role as contributing to positive changes that enhance the business climate so that semiconductor companies do want to accommodate big investments./.
