Vietnam and Australia seek to boost IT cooperation

August 14, 2021 | 17:53

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A virtual conference on Vietnam-Australia trade cooperation in the IT sector was held for the first time on August 10-12, aiming to promote IT business activities between the two countries.

Vietnam and Australia seek to boost IT cooperation

The 3-day meeting was promoting IT cooperation between Vietnam and Australia (Illustration photo of an IT event)

The meeting was held by the Vietnam Software & IT Services Association (VINASA) and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) with support from the Vietnam Trade Office in Australia, attracting the participation of numerous Vietnamese and Australian IT businesses.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Australia Nguyen Tat Thanh said that COVID-19 affected global travel and broke direct connections between the two countries.The pandemic, however, also ushered in a new period of development for the global IT industry. In recent years, both Vietnam and Australia have strengthened IT development, with a focus on digital transformation.

Nguyen Thi Thu Giang, secretary general of VINASA, believes that Vietnamese and Australian businesses now enjoy plentiful opportunities to increase cooperation. She hoped that the event would be a bridge for the two sides’ enterprises to set up partnerships and expand IT cooperation.

According to VINASA, with the Vietnamese government’s incentive policies to support the IT industry development, foreign businesses and investors are offered great incentives when entering the local IT market. Vietnam is also a bridge for investors to venture further into the ASEAN market.

Moreover, internet users in Vietnam increased rapidly from 260 million users in 2015 to 400 million in 2020, or 70 per cent of the population. Vietnam's IT human resources have reached over one million people, from hardware, software to digital content.

Ron Gauci, managing director of AIIA, said both Australia and Vietnam have their own strengths in IT, so there are opportunities for their businesses to complement each other. In Australia, the digital economy is growing strongly, covering many areas such as agriculture, mining, education, and health. The country has great demand for human resources and IT products.

Gauci emphasised that this is an opportunity for Vietnamese IT companies to strengthen cooperation with Australian firms, and also for Australian companies and organisations to hire high-quality IT human resources from the Southeast Asian nation.

Nguyen Phu Hoa, head of the Vietnam Trade Office in Australia, said that to meet growing demands for IT products in Australia, the agency will organise a forum to promote export of Vietnam's digital products to Australia.