IT industry draws foreign investors

Vietnam's IT market remains attractive to prominent investors such as Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, said Pham Tan Cong, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa).
Vietnam's IT market remains attractive to prominent investors such asJapan, Taiwan and Thailand, said Pham Tan Cong, deputy chairman of theVietnam Software Association (Vinasa).

"Japanese IT firmsnow consider Vietnamese enterprises reliable partners. Therefore, therewill be many opportunities for Vietnamese IT enterprises to developbusiness activities," he said.

After India and China, Vietnam is Japan's biggest outsourcing software partner.

Tadashi Higashino, deputy president of Japan 's NEC, said his groupwas looking for Vietnamese partners. Japan's economy is recovering andVietnam has a skilful labour force that can meet NEC's strictrequirements, he said.

NEC is looking to develop cloudcomputing and wants to join a number of Vietnamese Stateprogrammes, such as the e-Government project. NEC has already opened abranch in Vietnam, employing 150 software engineers, Higashino said.

Meanwhile, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council(TAITRA) has chosen Vietnam to advertise its IT products and brandname.

Tso Wei-Dar, TAITRA's chief representative inVietnam , said Taiwanese IT firms were attempting to co-operate withVietnamese retailers, such as Phong Vu, Hoan Long, Microstar andSilicom, to expand the Taiwanese IT products distribution network inVietnam .

Meanwhile, 16 Thai software companies,including well-known names like Adasoft, AI Soft, Arunawad Dot Com andComance International, Computer Telephony Asia, Dynamic IT SP and ITWorks, arrived in HCM City in mid-August looking for businessopportunities.

The Thai Software Export PromotionAssociation (TSEP) is planning to enhance the profile of Thai productsin 2010 by helping its companies find overseas markets, particularly inVietnam . TSEP said Thai software firms would focus on Hanoi andHCM City. TSEP is looking to do business in Hanoi with theGovernment, while in HCM City it is targeting private companies,the association said.

Vietnam's information andtechnology sector hit an annual growth rate of between 20-25 percent inthe 2000-2009 period, according to the Ministry of Information andTelecommunications.

The IT industry has averaged a growthrate of two to three times that of the gross domestic products (GDP) inthe last few years. The revenue in the hardware sector reached 4.68billion USD in 2009 – eight times higher than in 2000. Meanwhile, thesoftware sector earned 880 million USD in 2009, 580 million USD morethan in 2000, according to the General Statistics Office.

The IT sector has attracted 5.7 billion USD in foreign direct investmentin hardware projects for firms such as Samsung, Foxconn, Intel, Canonand Fujitsu.

Meanwhile, market researchers such as ATKearney and Gartner said Vietnam was one of the most attractivemarkets for software outsourcing in the world./.

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