Telecoms must drive Vietnam's development
HANOI - The rapid development of a
domestic telecommunications industry will put Vietnam on a
fast-track to the knowledge-based economy, according to
Professor Do Trung Ta, chairman of the Vietnam Post and
Telecommunications Corp [VNPT] Management Board.
Ta used a HCM City weekend seminar on the
knowledge-based economy to reiterate the importance to
Vietnam's development of absorbing scientific and
technological innovations from more developed countries.
This fits the so-called "leapfrog" theory of development, which
envisages Vietnam skipping past certain staging posts on the
road to the knowledge economy by learning from others - in
short, by not re-inventing the wheel.
Participants at the two-day seminar, organised by the Vietnamese Oriental Research and Development Institute
(ORDI) and Germany's Hans Seidel Foundation in HCM City, explored practical ways in which this theory could
be brought to fruition.
Associate Professor Dongyun Park from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore warned that Vietnam
needed to be realistic about the limitations of the information technology (IT) revolution.
"IT may allow Vietnam to leapfrog over some technological barriers, but it will not enable Vietnam or any other
country to dodge sound economic policies," he said.
He advised Vietnam to open its telecommunications market as a means of improving the quantity and quality of
telecom services.
Park also said that the country could not avoid heavy investment into human resources development.
The term "knowledge-based economy" has been a recurrent theme of Vietnamese policy debate in the last few
years, although the central role of science and technology in development was first mooted back at the Sixth
National Party Congress in 1986.
Since then, the Party has repeatedly stressed that "knowledge" and "information" were as important as capital and
labour in developing a 21st-century economy.
ORDI, established last May under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations, is a crystallisation
of the Government's thinking in this area.
ORDI co-chairman Trinh Quang Phu told the seminar that the "knowledge economy" would take different forms in
different countries.
In Vietnam, he said, it had to be remembered that 80 per cent of the population still relied on agriculture to earn a
living, and 70 per cent of workers are farmers.
Reducing these proportions - the so-called restructure of the Vietnamese economy - and fomenting
industrialisation was a crucial step towards building a knowledge economy, he said.
Ta agreed, saying it was in this task that science and technology were to play their most important role.
"Science and technology are a vital tool for increasing productivity, quality and efficiency in all socio-economic
activities, and will accelerate the comprehensive renovation process in Vietnam," he said.
Part of this push involves major investment in developing telecommunications, as had already been occurring over
the past decade.
The telecommunications network has been completely automated, with 100 per cent of switching and transmission
systems digitalised.
There was a 34-fold expansion in telephone lines between 1991 and 2001, and Vietnam now ranks second in the
world regarding telephone network growth.
The country hosts six terrestrial stations connecting to the Intelsat and Intersputnik systems, and three international
submarine optical cable systems.
Digital telephone switches have been deployed throughout the country.
A five-year plan for the telecommunications sector through 2005 will see continued modernisation of the national
telecommunications network.
Vietnam plans to launch the medium-sized Vinasat satellite into orbit in 2004, which will help satisfy the growing
demand for communications infrastructure here.
"Vietnam will soon be on the information superhighway. The basic principle is to allow the participation of a large
number of sectors, and to open up the market. It is crucial for a country to have a knowledge economy," Ta said.
Vietnam News Agency - June 20, 2002.
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