Vietnam lucrative market for digital economy

Illustrative image (Source: VietnamPlus)

Vietnam is believed to be a lucrative market for digital economy with the second fastest growth pace in the world last year, after India.

Vietnam has a population of nearly 100 million, ranking 15th in the world, but the size of its digital market stood at only the 25th position among the 39 countries surveyed in 2022 by Financial Time and Omdia.

However, the gross merchandise value of its digital economy increased 28% to 23 billion USD in 2022 from 18 billion USD in 2021. It is expected to grow 31% to hit 49 billion USD in 2025, according to the "e-Conomy SEA 2022" report released by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company.

Meanwhile, the Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society reported that the digital economy enjoyed growth in all the three aspects of the ICT economy, platform digital economy, and sectoral digital economy. IT services contributed the most to this economy, about 30%, followed by e-commerce (14.3%), and hardware production (12.83%).

The Lao dong (Labour) daily cited Tran Minh Tuan, Director of the Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society under the Ministry of Information and Communications, as saying that digital market, digital space, and digital data are necessary for developing a digital economy, and to do that, the first thing is to ensure digital infrastructure.

He noted the ministry has taken measures for building infrastructure to guarantee the development of the digital economy.

Stressing the importance of human resources, Vu Thi Minh Tu, Director for external relations at Lazada Vietnam, held that the quality of human resources for the digital economy in Vietnam remains modest while this is one of the factors affecting the economy’s sustainable development.

The Central Institute for Economic Management said to secure sustainable development, the country should perfect the legal framework, including regulations and policies on cyber security, competition, and taxes, in a way that promotes the role, responsibility, and rights of buyers./.