Digitization could add billions to Vietnam GDP: official

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Vu Dai Thang said this at the Vietnam Private Sector Economic Forum on Thursday morning quoting the findings of Data 61, an Australian data science research and engineering firm. Vietnam’s GDP is currently $223.9 billion.

He also cited the company as warning 38 percent of jobs could be lost to digitization.

Thang quoted Google and Singaporean sovereign fund Temasek as saying Vietnam's digital economy was worth $9 billion last year and is expected to reach $30 billion by 2025.

The digital economy is growing rapidly and permeating all aspects of socio-economic life in all countries, and would completely change the way in which production, organization, provision of services, consumption, and communication are done, he said.

"Enterprises are the keystone to this growth, and businesses should proactively look to apply digital technologies to smooth the transformation and lay the foundation for Vietnam’s digital economy." 

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Planning and Investment is working on a national strategy to capitalize on Industry 4.0 to enable businesses to take advantage of opportunities presented by digitization, he added.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has said it has been tasked by the Government with drawing up a roadmap for the country’s digitization.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung said the plan proposes having 50 percent of businesses carrying out business digitally by 2025 and the digital economy then accounting for 20 percent of the nation’s GDP.

It also sets a target for the government of having at least 80 percent of its interactions with the public and businesses carried out digitally by 2025.

The digital economy has been booming in the last few years. It grew by over 25 percent last year and the country can sustain this rate for the next two or three years, according to the Vietnam E-Commerce Association.

Billed the largest scale event of its kind this year, the Vietnam Private Sector Economic Forum 2019 is jointly organized by the government and the Central Economic Commission, in collaboration with VnExpress and the IEC Group.