Digital transformation to be hastened to support growth drivers

Chinh noted that Vietnam gives priority to growth by renewing traditional growth drivers, including consumption, investment, and export, while also promoting new ones such as the digital economy, the green economy, the circular economy, the sharing economy, and the knowledge economy. In this process, he said that science-technology and innovation play an important role, whilst digital transformation can be viewed as the key to realising the goal.

According to the PM, the Party has outlined digital transformation, the digital economy, and digital society as strategic breakthroughs in its wider development goals. The Politburo has issued a resolution on the country’s active engagement in Industry 4.0, which emphasises the urgent need to accelerate the digital transformation process.

The important task now is to promote economic growth, stabilise the macroeconomy, ensure major balances of the economy, restructure the economy, and promote growth drivers to accomplish the set goals, said the PM, adding that these issues are all closely related to digital transformation.

In his view, the Government, ministries, and agencies are building and perfecting institutions, mechanisms, and policies to promote the development of the digital government, digital society, digital citizens, digital infrastructure, and high-quality human resources. As a way of achieving this, large foreign technology corporations all recommend that Vietnam focus on developing digital transformation, cloud computing, and databases.

The digital economy is therefore permeating all production, business, and consumption activities, whilst also fundamentally changing the country’s socio-economic and cultural landscape, said the PM, adding that more efforts should be made in order to speed up this process.

He asked delegates to make an in-depth analysis of the digital transformation process, draw lessons, share role models, and work out measures specifically aimed at accelerating the process.

The Ministry of Information and Communications reported that Vietnam now ranks 86th out of 193 countries and territories globally in terms of digital transformation, with its online public services in 76th position, up five notches.

Elsewhere in ASEAN, the country’s e-Government ranks sixth after Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and Indonesia, while its online public services finish fifth behind the likes of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Most notably, the Vietnamese digital economic growth rate has gradually increased over the years, hitting 28% in 2022 and 19% in 2023, thereby ranking first in ASEAN in 2022 and 2023. The digital economy made up 16.5% of the country’s GDP in 2023, and the figure rose to 18.5% as of June.