“We will focus to strengthen science and technology applications in the business community and State offices as well as speed up the market for science and technology,” Nguyen Viet Dung, director of the department told the Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Sai Gon) newspaper.

Last year, the department implemented 367 scientific research projects and created 24 incubation centres.

There were around 666 startup projects, an increase of 133 percent in comparison with yearly plan, that received support from such incubations.

The department also signed a co-operation agreement with the central and Central Highlands provinces of Binh Dinh and Gia Lai, and with Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the World Bank.

“However, science and technology activities in 2017 has many limitations, such as a small and limited amount of funds for scientific development projects,” Dung added.

The city’s technology market is considered very big, but limited transactions occur due to copyright protection and technology assessment.

“Connections between scientists and the market are very loose, the role of intermediate organisations is very dim, and human resources for technology assessment are limited.

“The city’s science and technology market still see the dominance of activities of buying and selling imported equipment and lacks more important ones, such as technology transfer or technology copyright selling and buying,” he added.

At present, the contribution of the science and technology market was ranked second in a group of nine key services with annual growth of 17 percent.-VNA