“Science and technology, along with education, has always been given priority in our national policy,” said Nghiem Vu Khai, vice chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for Science, Technology and the Environment. “But this law is the first legal document that institutionalises that policy.”

The new law demonstrates the Government’s policy to develop what professor Nguyen Quang Liem, director of the Institute of Material Science under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology terms as the “intelligence economy”.

The strong point of the new law is that it would provide a co-ordinated legal foundation for all aspects of hi-tech activities from infrastructure construction to manufacturing, production and hi-tech education and training.

In 2005, the Committee for Science, Technology and Environment drafted the Law on e-Commerce and presented it to the National Assembly. At the end of 2006, the committee drafted and presented a decree on hi-technology.

However, the National Assembly Standing Committee concluded that it was essential to look into the law on hi-technology in order to create a more complete legal foundation for the development of the hi-tech industry, and the Ministry of Science and Technology had been given the task of drafting the law under the supervision of the Committee for Science, Technology and the Environment.

In recent workshops and seminars discussing the law and its implementation, many hi-tech enterprises and business leaders spoke about the need for guiding regulations to limit confusion in applying the new law to business.

The Ministry of Science and Technology was working closely with about 20 related ministries and agencies, domestic and foreign enterprises, institutes and scientists on a list of hi-technology titles and products which would later be submitted for approval by the Prime Minister and become the foundation for the guiding documents, Khai noted.

The breakthrough of the law, Khai said, was the National Hi-tech Plan, which would be submitted by the ministry to the Government in August, to the Politburo in September and to the National Assembly at its next session later this year.