Current events

Vietnam's digital economy grows highest in ASEAN for 2 consecutive years

Ha Van July 19, 2024 12:08

On the morning of July 19, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation, chaired the Government Standing Conference on digital transformation with ministers, heads of sectors, and Chairmen of People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities.

Kinh tế số Việt Nam tăng cao nhất ASEAN 2 năm liên tiếp- Ảnh 1.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chaired the Government Standing Committee Conference on digital transformation with ministers, heads of sectors, and chairmen of People's Committees of centrally-run provinces and cities. Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac

The conference was connected online from the Government headquarters to the People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities.

Also attending the Conference were Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha, Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Long; Ministers, heads of sectors, members of the National Committee and the Working Group implementing Project 06 of the Government, and leaders of People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities.

According to the Program, the Conference listened to reports and discussed solutions to build a digital government, digital society, digital citizens, serving the development of the digital economy, removing existing problems and bottlenecks in the implementation of Project 06 of the Government on developing applications of population data, identification and electronic authentication to serve national digital transformation in the period 2022 - 2025, with a vision to 2030.

Science, technology and innovation are high-quality productive forces.

In his opening speech, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that the 13th National Party Congress identified science, technology, and innovation as major driving forces in socio-economic development in this and the following terms.

Our Party has deeply mentioned digital transformation in many documents, in which the Politburo issued Resolution 52 on a number of guidelines and policies to proactively participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which it determined to strongly promote national digital transformation, focusing on developing the digital economy.

Kinh tế số Việt Nam tăng cao nhất ASEAN 2 năm liên tiếp- Ảnh 2.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh delivered the opening speech at the Conference. Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac

Currently, we are prioritizing growth by renewing traditional growth drivers (investment, export, consumption) and promoting new growth drivers (digital economy, green economy, circular economy, knowledge economy, sharing economy, emerging industries such as semiconductor chips, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, etc.).

The important tasks now are to promote economic growth, stabilize the macro-economy, control inflation, ensure major balances of the economy, restructure the economy, and strive to complete the goals set for the entire term. These tasks are all closely related to digital transformation.

According to the Prime Minister, in the current context, high-quality production forces are science, technology and innovation, including digital transformation. Whoever can grasp them will go faster, make more breakthroughs and be more effective. We have identified the motto of "catching up, advancing together and surpassing" in many emerging, high-tech fields.

The Prime Minister affirmed that digital transformation has become an inevitable and irreversible trend at the international, regional and national levels. Digital transformation has reached "every alley, every house, every person", the digital economy permeates all production, business and consumption activities, fundamentally and profoundly changing socio-economic activities.

The Prime Minister also spent time analyzing the role and positive, strong impact of digital transformation on changing methods and improving the effectiveness of management, direction and operation at all levels and sectors. On the other hand, recent practice has shown that a very important lesson is that fast, strong and effective digital transformation plays a special and decisive role for leaders at ministries, sectors and localities.

Kinh tế số Việt Nam tăng cao nhất ASEAN 2 năm liên tiếp- Ảnh 3.
The conference was connected online from the Government headquarters to the People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities. Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac

Therefore, this is an important Conference for the Government, the Prime Minister and leaders of ministries, branches and localities to discuss and unify thinking, methodologies and approaches to act together, raise awareness, identify goals, viewpoints, tasks and solutions that are correct, accurate and feasible, organize effective implementation, save time and costs but achieve the highest efficiency, strongly promote the national digital transformation process, build a digital government, digital society, digital citizens and develop a digital economy.

The Prime Minister emphasized the need for comprehensive digital transformation for all people with the participation of the entire political system, people, businesses, cooperation and support from international friends and partners, focusing on building digital infrastructure, perfecting digital institutions, and training digital human resources to "catch up, keep up and surpass" in today's volatile world.

The Prime Minister asked delegates to focus on assessing the digital transformation situation in recent times, results, achievements, shortcomings, limitations, analyzing causes, lessons learned, proposing tasks and solutions; and having appropriate directives and management documents after the Conference to organize timely and effective implementation.

Kinh tế số Việt Nam tăng cao nhất ASEAN 2 năm liên tiếp- Ảnh 4.
Comrade Tran Van Son - Minister, Head of the Government Office speaks at the conference. Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac
Kinh tế số Việt Nam tăng cao nhất ASEAN 2 năm liên tiếp- Ảnh 5.
Delegates attending the Conference. Photo: VGP/Nhat Bac

Report of the Ministry of Information and Communications -The standing agency of the National Committee on Digital Transformation said that according to the world's assessment, Vietnam's digital economic growth rate has increased gradually over the years.

If in 2020, Vietnam only ranked 6th in the ASEAN region in terms of digital economic growth rate, then in 2021 it ranked 3rd and in the next two years 2022, 2023 it ranked 1st. Specifically, Google's report determined that Vietnam's digital economy in 2022 grew by 28%, in 2023 it reached 19%, 3.5 times higher than the GDP growth rate.

The 2022 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Readiness Index report ranked Vietnam 55th globally, while Singapore ranked 2nd, Malaysia 29th, and Thailand 31st. In terms of global cybersecurity and safety rankings, Vietnam ranked 25th out of 194 countries and territories.

According to Vietnam's assessment, the national digital transformation index (DTI) has increased steadily over the years, reaching 0.71 points by 2022; component indexes on digital government, digital economy and digital society still maintain a high growth rate of 45% - 55%.

Regarding the settlement of administrative procedures and provision of online public services for people and businesses, if in 2019 it only reached nearly 11%, from 2020 up to now there has been a breakthrough growth, reaching 55% to date, 5 times higher than the entire period before 2020; the rate of online records in 2019 was only about 5%, at present, this rate has reached 43% (an increase of more than 8 times).

Regarding digital economic development, the Ministry of Information and Communications estimates that the proportion of digital economy in Vietnam's GDP will reach 16.5% in 2023 and 18.5% by June 2024...

Ha Van