VietNamNet Bridge - Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has endorsed a plan to develop the hi-tech sector, with the country visioning to have up to 500 enterprises producing hi-tech products within the next ten years from the current 100 firms.

According to the plan signed by the deputy prime minister last week, the country will focus on four key industries comprising information technology, biotechnology, new materials technology, and automation technology.

Some of the important hi-tech products pinpointed in the plan for development in the years ahead are micro-electromechanical systems, nano-electromechanical systems, stainless alloy steel, and industrial robots among others.

Hi-tech industrial products should account for around 45% of the total gross domestic product of the country by 2020. Around one quarter of hi-tech products will be for export.

By 2020, the country expects to have some 20,000 experts and engineers to be trained for working at hi-tech industrial projects of the country.

Cong Hop, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Department of Science and Technology, told the Daily on Monday that at the moment, the country has some 100 enterprises producing hi-tech products in these four key industries.

Hop said hi-tech products are generating an industrial production value of less than 10% of the country’s GDP now.

As hi-tech projects require big investment capital, the country will create more favorable conditions to call for more private investments including incentives in land use, corporate income tax and technology transfer.

“Between now and 2015, the country will give more incentives for calling investments into the four key industries,” said Hop.         

Phan Minh Tan, director of the HCMC Department of Science and Technology, said that at the moment most operational hi-tech enterprises in the country are the foreign-invested enterprises and most of the products are limited to assembling.

Tan said in the coming years, the country should create more favorable conditions for domestic enterprises to produce hi-tech products with a higher ratio of localization.

Source: SGT