A survey by the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) has found that many Vietnamese work in the semiconductor industry all over the world, and many are working for giant companies, including Qualcomm, Amkor and Texas Instruments.

At Make in Vietnam Forum 2023, Nguyen Anh Thi, head of the HCM City Hi-tech Zone Management Board, said Vietnam’s current conditions are favorable for inviting overseas-Vietnamese semiconductors to return to work in the industry.

The survey found that many Vietnamese in the US are willing to leave large tech corporations to return to Vietnam to work. They would be an important additional source of workers for Vietnam’s semiconductor industry. 

Trinh Khac Hue, CEO of Corvo Vietnam, thinks that Vietnam should offer a preferential personal income tax to talented staff in microchip designing. 

The head of the IT Institute under Hanoi National University, said to attract talent from all over the world to Vietnam, a good working environment with attractive pay and other allowance schemes are needed.

Tran Viet Hung, founder and CEO of Got It!, said one of the great advantages Vietnam has is Vietnamese-born people working in the semiconductor industry, including some who are very prominent, such as Le Duy Loan, the first Asian and only woman chosen as Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments.

Hung stressed that Vietnam needs a detailed strategy and specific goals for the semiconductor industry. If overseas Vietnamese experts think plans are ambitious enough, they will return to implement the plans. Only when Vietnam has attractive projects will it be able to lure talent.

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has created a national strategy on semiconductor industry development, and implementation began in 2024. Vietnam strives to have 50,000 chip design engineers, and hundreds of thousands of engineers and technical workers in related industries.

It is expected that by 2030 Vietnam will become a microchip semiconductor industrial center specializing in designing, packaging and testing. MIC will put forward key tasks in reforming institutions and policies, developing human resources, supporting startups, and forming a microchip semiconductor ecosystem.

Trong Dat