Businesses are an important driver for the development of science and technology in Vietnam. Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Xuan Dinh writes about how the ministry supports local businesses in their quest to boost innovative solutions and technology advancements.

In 2019, with the close attention and guidance of the Party, the National Assembly (NA) and the government, as well as the co-ordination between ministries and central and local agencies, Vietnam’s science and technology sector gained many encouraging results, contributing to the overall success of the country.

For the first time, Vietnam’s ranking on the Global Innovation Index by the World Intellectual Property Organization increased by three places compared to 2018, ranking 42th out of 129 countries and economies, first among 26 low-average income countries, and third in the ASEAN, right af­ter Singapore and Malaysia. 

Last year, the Ministry of Sci­ence and Technology (MoST) implemented many solutions to promote the development of the national and access to the international startup ecosystem. 

In addition to the national Techfest, the MoST also organized International Techfests for the first time in the US, the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Singapore to promote Vietnam's innovative startup ecosystem to the world. 

Besides these events, the MoST implemented a traceability system to transparently publicize products' origin, serving for inter­national integration and efficiency of state management and ensuring the quality and safety of products. 

Social sciences and humanities provided the scientific foundations for building socio-economic strat­egies and national policies. 

Meanwhile, natural sciences made practical contributions to strengthen the capacity of forecasting, warning, and preventing natural disasters.

Moreover, scientists have been continuously working on solutions to adapt to climate change and to design, build and launch the MicroDragon earth observation Satellite.

The number of international publications in Vietnam by 2019 increased by 1.3 times.

In agriculture, science and technology have contributed to the success of the National Target Programme on New Rural De­velopment, actively supporting value chains for local products, according to the One Community One Product programme. 

As for industry and trade, the MoST has worked closely with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to carry out scientific re­search tasks and formulate stan­dards and technical regulations for products, as well as to protect intellectual property and prevent commercial frauds. 

In healthcare, for the first time, a river of a brain dead patient was successfully divided and trans­planted to two patients, marking a breakthrough in Vietnam's organ transplant technique. In addition, the IVACFLU-A vaccine was suc­cessfully manufactured. This is the first made-in-Vietnam flu vaccine which can prevent three common strains of the influenza virus. 

Regarding construction, Vietnam used modem technolo­gies in the construction of large­scale projects. New materials were found such as concrete produced with sea sand and sea­water, reducing the impact of corrosion for building houses in seashore regions. 

In terms of defense and secu­rity, thanks to the research and ap­plication of technology, Vietnam has manufactured many kinds of equipment, serving the protection of the country's sovereignty, in­cluding radars and rockets. 

In localities, businesses are in­creasingly interested in the appli­cation of science and technology in manufacturing and developing products along the value chains, thereby improving the competi­tiveness of their products. 

Promoting business connections 

Identifying that enterpris­es play a key role in technological innovations along With institutes and universities, the MoST has made efforts to fa­cilitate them by developing and submitting legal documents to the NA and the government. Ad­ditionally. the ministry has also carried out action programmes to encourage enterprises to im­prove their productivity, quali­ty, and competitiveness. 

Moreover, the MoST will continue supporting enterpris­es in implementing projects in technological innovation and re­search and development. 

The ministry aims to make optimal use of national science and technology programmes, the National Technology Innovation Fund, thereby supporting business­es to apply technology in design, production, and distribution while improving labour quality and efficiency. 

With these executed and planned measures and actions, the science and technology sector has already achieved encouraging re­sults such as the improved growth rate reflected by the increase in la­bour productivity. 

Especially in 2018 and 2019, the economic growth was at a record high for the last 10 years, reaching over 7 per cent with credit growth of less than 14 per cent compared to 17-18 per cent of previous years. 

Regarding connecting Viet­namese businesses with foreign counterparts, the MoST has also developed and implemented a number of policies to promote technology transfer, especially for high and advanced technolo­gies in priority industries 

Furthermore, the MoST has provided funding for domestic businesses to import the world's most advanced technologies under the National Science and Technol­ogy Programme or the National Technology Innovation Fund.

Particularly, from 2011 to 2019, the MoST proactively organized 11 technology matching and demonstration events with the participation of businesses from Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Czech Re­public, and the United States.

During these events, more than 3,000 processes for equipment and products of domestic and international institutes, schools, and enterprises were show­cased, and nearly 150 contracts for co-operation and technology transfer were signed with a total value of more than VND2.25 trillion (US$98 million). 

Raising number of tech firms 

In order to ensure the feasi­bility of the set goals, the MoST has been promoting activities of perfecting institutions and poli­cies, including building a number of amended laws. All of these amendments and guiding docu­ments aim to supplement regu­lations on incubation and the es­tablishment and development of science and tech enterprises. 

Moreover, the MoST aims to synchronise the system of mech­anisms, policies, and legal docu­ments on science and technology, including all relevant laws and documents.

Meanwhile, the coun­try has also enhanced the effective formulation and implementation of programmes to support the de­velopment of innovative business­es by co-operating with ministries and sectors. 

The science and tech­nology sector win pay special at­tention to establishing incubation institutions in close co-operation to regional and international ones, thereby meeting the current needs of supporting innovative startups - all with the active and strong support of the MoST.