Innovation has been seen as a tool to boost socio-economic development in Vietnam, said Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh at a conference on innovation in Hanoi.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry speaks at the conference

The conference was co-held by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) on the occasion of WIPO Director General Francis Gurry’s visit to Vietnam from March 21-23.

According to WIPO’s release of the global innovation index 2016, Vietnam was ranked 59th out of 128 countries and economies in terms of innovation, maintaining its top place among lower-middle-income economies, Anh said.

Vietnam scores high points in the Innovation Output Sub-Index capturing knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs, with lower scores in the Innovation Input Sub-Index featuring business climate, rankings of universities, rate of skilled female labourers, and ICT services exports and imports, he added.

The minister said that in the past years, Vietnam’s intellectual property system has made significant progress, contributing to the development of science and technology in particular and socio-economic growth in general.

The country has created a legal system compatible with the world’s standards, a network of agencies establishing and exercising intellectual property rights as well as mechanisms promoting the commercialisation of intellectual property, he noted.

At the conference, WIPO experts introduced methods to collect data and calculate innovation index as well as solutions to improving innovation and innovation index in Vietnam.

VNA