VietNamNet Bridge – Relevant ministries have got puzzled when listing Vietnam-made information technology (IT) products that the state funded projects will prioritize to use.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has suggested the list of priority products and services which comprises of 37 items belonging to four categories, including hardware (9 products), software (12), digital content (3) and services (13).

As for hardware products and electronics, the enterprises that manufacture the products need to have the minimum turnover of VND10 billion a year from the production, assembling and trade in the last two consecutive years, or their products have been used by at least five state agencies, or 10 organizations and businesses, or 500 individuals.

Besides, the products need to meet other requirements in terms of the domestic production costs, the numbers of workers of enterprises, and the quality management certificates.

Meanwhile, software providers need to have the products’ turnover at VND500 million a year at least over the last two consecutive years, or their products have been used by at least two state agencies, five organizations or businesses, or 500 individuals.

Digital content and IT service providers need to prove that their products can bring the turnover of VND2 billion a year over the last two consecutive years, and satisfy similar requirements.

The Ministry of Finance has expressed its worry that if the regulations are designed in an unreasonable way, low-quality and substandard products and services would flow to the public sector, which would cause immeasurable consequences.

An official of the ministry admitted it’s difficult to define what “made-in Vietnam” means. A lot of servers, desktop computers and laptops are introduced as made-in-Vietnam products, but the “Vietnamese content” in the products is very low.

Most of the products are assembled in Vietnam from the import low-cost accessories which don’t have the quality high enough.

“If we let the products to “go through,” it will be unfair for other enterprises, while they cannot meet the quality requirements,” he said.

He went on to say that easy requirements would provide enterprises the opportunities to be exploited to import low quality products into Vietnam and enjoy the priority policies.

The Ministry of Finance has also pointed out that there are not criteria and standards to which organizations would refer when building up package deals, while the criteria are very important to be sure that state agencies can buy the best possible products at the most possible reasonable prices.

The Ministry of Information and Communication said it has added some provisions into the latest draft version of the document so as to be able to choose the best products and services for the public sector.

The draft document says that the hardware products and electronics to be prioritized in state funded projects must have the domestic production costs at 20 percent of the total production costs at least.

Especially, the manufacturers or the products must have at least 50 Vietnamese hardware and electronics workers who have stable jobs at the enterprises under the long term (1-year at least) labor contracts. These include the research and development (R&D) workers, quality testers, engineers and workers who make the products.

As for software products, their domestic production costs must account for 30 percent of the total production costs.

Buu Dien