The preferential policies for enterprises in the field of science and technology is encountering various obstacles due to lack of professional capacity and unreasonable mechanism and complicated administrative procedures, greatly affecting the achievement of the National Strategy regarding Science and Technology Development in the period between 2011 and 2020.

The High-tech Center in Ho Chi Minh City 

According to the newest report from the Ministry of Science and Technology, there are totally 303 businesses nationwide which have already been certified as a science-and-technology enterprise, along with 43 organizations considered as high-tech ones.

In addition, approximately 2,100 businesses have satisfied the requirements of being a science-and-technology enterprise, yet they have not applied for the certificate.

The National Strategy regarding Science and Technology Development from 2011-2020 mentioned that Vietnam would have 5,000 science-and-technology enterprises in 2020.

However, phase 1 of the Strategy was unsuccessful when the target of having 3,000 science-and-technology enterprises from 2011-2015 could not be reached.

Based on the present situation, there is a very high chance that the target of the second phase until 2010 will also be missed.

The leaders of the Ministry of Science and Technology admitted that the implementation of supporting policies for enterprises in the field of science and technology is bumping into numerous difficulties.

There is a severe lack of proper mechanism as well as aids for businesses to implement technological renovations and applications, especially those related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Despite a high determination from the government, the execution of the self-management mechanism among state-owned science and technology organizations reveals too many inadequacies that need to be overcome.

Several of these organizations are still afraid of implementing this mechanism, resulting in low efficiency. There are also not many organizations finishing the transforming procedure to a fully operated science-and-technology enterprise.

All of these are contributing to the potential failure of the Strategy.

There is a fact that while the Ministry of Science and Technology is authorizing its local Departments to review related documents and issue certificates for any business upon request, the professional capacity of these departments themselves is not sufficient to fulfill the tasks; hence, they are not sure whether the business under examination is truly applying high-tech that meets the standards or not.

Also, in spite of the existence of the incentive policy on tax as well as space, not many science and technology enterprises can take advantage of this, or that policy is not encouraging enough for them to follow.

The complicated administrative procedures and the bureaucracy of local authorities further obstruct businesses from applying for a certificate although they have already met all requirements of being a science-and-technology enterprise.

In the meeting of work assignment in 2018 of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc stated that despite having certain achievements, the development of science and technology does not truly correlate with the needs of economy and society development.

Businesse are still not the center of the innovation procedures and not able to mobilize many investment forces in the society for their own technological activities.

Meanwhile, the financial mechanism is still unreasonable and limits the development while the transformation to a self-management organization of many state-owned companies is so troublesome. This, according to the Prime Minister, must be changed immediately.

A transaction floor for new technologies must be established to boost the market.

Many experts in the field claimed that it is high time the government implemented solutions to remove any obstacles regarding the registration procedure for a science-and-technology enterprise, to effectively implement results of technological researches into business activities, to timely support enterprises, especially startup ones, to overcome their own difficulties and enhance their human resources so that they can access investment resources.

SGGP