The National Steering Committee for Information Technology and the Ministry of Information and Communications announced a new edition of “Vietnam White Book on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) 2011” in Hanoi on July 12.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, Nguyen Minh Hong, said that this was the third year the White Book had been issued to local ministries and departments, ICT organisations and their foreign counterparts, domestic and foreign research organisations, and trade commissions that cooperated with Vietnamese businesses in ICT.

The book included new content, such as a review of Vietnam ’s ICT development over the past 10 years, the introduction of a project to forge Vietnam into a strong ICT country, analyses of IT infrastructure, post and telecommunications, IT human resources, application and information safety, along with legal documents on ICT, international cooperation activities and the country’s leading ICT businesses.

The new edition will serve as an important reference for State management agencies in their policymaking and help domestic and foreign organisations and businesses work out business strategies and seek cooperation opportunities in ICT in Vietnam .

Statistics in the book showed the ICT sector last year earned almost 17 billion USD, a nineteen-fold increase over 2000.

Also, last year the total number of telephone and internet broadband subscribers nationwide was 126 million and nearly 3.7 million, respectively, while the nation had 277 IT universities and colleges./.