Experts and business circles have forecast that drastic changes will occur in Viet Nam’s fledgling telecoms and e-commerce areas as the Southeast Asian country has become an official member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). However, they, warned Viet Nam needs to do much to really embark on the high tech fast track.

“Telecoms companies will certainly come here in the near future because Viet Nam has a very interesting market in Asia,” said Oliver Massmann, member of the Management Board of Eurocham in Viet Nam, stating that investors will keep an eye on this market of 85 million people, which offers a lot of room for telecom and high-tech infrastructure companies to operate.

Intel, one of the pioneer investors who heralded an investment wave in high-tech sector in Viet Nam, has bet on the human factor and market potential

“As many as 60 percent of the 85 million Vietnamese population are under 35 years old and coupled with a strong desire to learn and continuously improve their knowledge. This is one of the key reasons that we choose our newest A/T facility to be in Viet Nam”, explained Rick Howarth, Intel general director, citing the country’s stable political environment, strong economic potential and the government’s commitment.

Minister of Post and Telecommunications Do Trung Ta said Viet Nam has committed to opening its market to enterprises and businesses. Foreign businesses, for instance, are now allowed to contribute to as much as 49 percent of a joint-venture which has established infrastructures, instead of contributing without being able to form a legal business entity as they did previously.

E-commerce a must with WTO accession

Business circles have predicted stiffer competition in Vietnam in the post-WTO era and that E-commerce would emerge as a must for enterprises.

“We will not wait but will be pro-active to be involved in this emerging sector. E-commerce has experienced a dramatic surge in 2006 and that’s the way for Vietnamese enterprises to approach the WTO market”, said Nguyen Ha Tuan, Managing Director of e-commerce Solution Centre under the Lac Viet Computing Company. The Lac Viet Computing Company is about to introduce LVepay, a payment portal which will link national banks so that users can get access to electronic payment.

According to a report released by Ministry of Trade’s e-commerce department, as many as 92 per cent of 1,000 surveyed enterprises were connected to the internet while 93.8 percent of them use their websites for companies’ advertisement, only 27.4 percent do so for e-commercial transaction and 3.2 percent for e-commercial .

The department’s deputy director, Tran Thanh Hai predicted a new level of development in e-commerce stemming from the familiarity of e-commerce transactions among citizens and businesses, business-to-business and the provision of public administrative services via the internet.

“People are confident that E - c ommerce will strongly develop in the next 3-5 years, as for me, I think it will reach a mature period in 2010,” Hai said.

Russell Pipe, Director of E-Government Programmes belonging to Kanan Institute added that he was “impressed with what the Vietnamese government has done and that the government was taking a leading role” and that “e-commerce policy and legal framework have been put in place, including law on digital signature”.

More state agencies also started providing administrative services for citizens and enterprises in 2006. The services include electronic licence registration, e-customs, and electronic certificates of origin. The country finished a legal framework for e-commerce in 2006 with the Law on Electronic Transactions, decree on e-commerce and an amended commerce law .

T he best way to make E-commerce a reality is to introduce E-government, according to Russel Pipe. “If you start getting licence of your motorbike or your restaurant or declare your income tax, if you must do that electronically, then it will make everybody more interested. If you register your children to school electronically, see it, all application will make people in the habit of using the Internet,” he said

Russell Pipe recommended Viet Nam to create a legal framework that protects e-commerce, because so far not many people have been familiarised with electronic payment. “Even if you make a payment inside Viet Nam or buy something across the border, then you’re really nervous about whether that they come back to you. So the “trust” factor, which is partly security and partly payment system is the other issue. To get people to use e-commerce, we must make people feel good about it.”

MOT’s E-commerce Deparment Tran Thanh Hai said the real challenge in boosting e-commerce is to change enterprises’ awareness of its concept , while Miguel Pardo de Zela, Commercial Counselor of the US Embassy in Viet Nam suggested Viet Nam should pay attention to improving the current infrastructures, namely a faster and more reliable communication network.

Last but not least, according to Miguel Pardo de Zela, language barriers are still an issue for e-commerce growth in Viet Nam, where English profiency is not yet popular with the larger population. “If I were a young person in Viet Nam, I will certainly spend a lot of time learning English, simply because it’s the door to learning all that people want to learn”.

Source: VNA