Digital economy - the future for VN development

A digital economy is an inevitable step for development, said Nguyen Thanh Hung, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications at the 2016 Internet Day event in Hanoi.
Digital economy - the future for VN development ảnh 1Illustrative image (Source: internet)
Hanoi (VNA) – A digital economy is an inevitable step for development as thetraditional economy is being saturated, said Nguyen Thanh Hung, Deputy Ministerof Information and Communications at the 2016 Internet Day event in Hanoi.

The Vietnam Internet Association on December 21 organised the event under thetheme “How digital content contributes to an Internet economy?”

The wide application of information technology (IT) in all activities of adigital economy will bring about high profits, he said.

“Many countries have defined the digital economy as a new developmental drivingforce for their socio-economic growth and development, as well as enhancing thenational competitive capacity on a global scale,” Hung said.

In recent years, the digital content industry in Vietnam has seen remarkabledevelopment, playing a more important role in the country’s IT sector.

The industry’s revenue increased from 480 million USD to 1.4 billion USD in the2008-2014 period with a yearly growth rate of about 20 percent. It attractedmore than 4,500 enterprises, creating 70,000 jobs.
Until now, Vietnam hasbuilt a diverse digital content industry, including online products foreducation, entertainment and content for mobile devices, Hung said.

The Deputy Minister said that the digital economy industry will createfavourable conditions to boost and develop the digital content into a keysector of the country’s IT industry.

With advantages such as young human resources, competitive labour costs, asharp increase in smart phones and 3G subscriptions and a developing Internetinfrastructure, Vietnam is evaluated as one of the potential markets of thedigital industry, said Hung.

“This is also an opportunity for Vietnamese companies to join the global supplychain of the digital economy in general and digital content supply chain inparticular”, he added.

However, he emphasised that the result is not proportional with the country’spotential, digital content revenue remains modest compared to the whole ITsector’s income.

Therefore, Hung asked telecommunication enterprises to focus on developinginfrastructure of transmission and telecommunications, applying modernhigh-quality technology to provide safe services to people.

Sharing at the event, Le Hong Minh, VNG CEO, said for those under 25 years old,Internet means smartphones rather than PCs. “It is similar to the case ofchanging from black and white television to colour television”, he explained.

“The number of smartphone users will increase 30 times by 2020 compared to 2010and accounted for nearly 60 percent of the Vietnamese population. Therefore,the opportunities for mobile Internet will be 40-100 times higher than PCInternet,” Minh said.

To illustrate the development of mobile Internet, Minh gave statistics of thedevelopment of mobile games (40 percent), m-commerce (60 percent) and mobilepayments (80 percent).

Internet Day is an annual event initiated by the Vietnam Internet Association.It is an occasion for enterprises operating in the Internet field, associationmembers, domestic and international technology companies, governmentrepresentatives and state management agencies to meet, exchange and shareexperience to develop the Internet, and accelerate application, content andtechnology services./.
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