Vietnam launches own Silicon Valley
HANOI - Work has started on a new software park in the commercial capital
of Ho Chi Minh City which Vietnam hopes will become its Silicon Valley, municipal
officials said Friday.
The city expects the 40 hectare (100 acre) park to employ as many as 20,000 people
by the end of the decade, information technology department official Nguyen Quang
Sy told AFP.
Initial construction work will focus on converting seven existing buildings to
accommodate 1,500 workers by next year.
The city has already received applications for space in them from 18 foreign and
domestic firms, Sy said.
Builders will then begin work on expanding the park to accommodate up to 10,000
workers by 2005 and between 15,000 and 20,000 by 2010, he said.
The city authorities plan to spend more than 12 million dollars on improving
infrastructure for the park to be supplemented by three million from the central
government for telecommunications.
Vietnam has been keen to develop its software industry to avoid falling further behind
its neighbours in the face of the rapid development of information technology.
In July its first software park opened in Ho Chi Minh City at a cost of 1.8 million dollars.
But despite more than doubling in the past 12 months, Internet subscriptions here still
number less than 85,000 here, equivalent to barely 0.1 percent of the population.
Vietnam now has five Internet service providers but all are run by state organizations
and the authorities continue to operate firewalls which block access to websites they
find objectionable such as those of the emigre opposition.
Low telephone ownership has been the main barrier to development of the web --
there are still just 3.2 lines per 100 people here and personal computer ownership is
lower still.
Agence France Presse - October 6, 2000.
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