Vu Hoang Anh – 20214347

Digital economy development in Vietnam:

Barriers and suggestions
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Khac Quoc Bao
Director of Institute of Financial Technology
Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics
After more than 30 years of opening up and implementing economic reforms, the
growth model based on labor and resource-intensive methods no longer generates stable and
sustainable development momentum. Therefore, the Government has early recognized the
huge potential of the growth model based on science, technology, and innovation, with the
development of the digital economy seen as an inevitable trend to create economic growth
momentum for Vietnam in the context of the fourth industrial revolution (The 4.0 Industry)
happening strongly.
Developing the digital economy is an inevitable direction.
Since the end of 2017, at the opening speech of the International Workshop -
Exhibition "Development of Smart Industry - Smart Industry World 2017", Prime Minister
Nguyen Xuan Phuc posed three big questions about the digital economy: 1) Where is
Vietnam? 2) What are other countries doing? and 3) What does Vietnam need to do to
successfully develop the digital economy and smart industry? The answers to these questions
have clearly shaped a development strategy that the Government has planned based on the
development of the digital economy. On January 14, 2020, the Prime Minister signed
Directive No. 01/CT-TTg on promoting the development of digital technology enterprises in
Vietnam with goals and 12 breakthrough solutions. The directive demonstrates the
Government's timely attention and action in contributing to the implementation of the
Resolution of the Politburo on some proactive policies and strategies to participate in
Industry 4.0. Recently, on December 28, 2019, at the conference summarizing the work in
2019 and deploying tasks for 2020 of the Ministry of Information and Communications,
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc once again reaffirmed that the digital economy is an
important driving force to propel Vietnam forward rapidly and lead in the development
process.
The fact shown that many recent studies have shown that in the past five years, there
has been a convergence of technologies. The convergence in the process of digital
transformation of various sectors has created an explosion of new models, business protocols,
and even revolutionary methods of production and production relationships. And the present
time can be considered the focal point of the technological convergence process. On the
platform of the sharing economy, that convergence and synergy will spread even more
strongly and drive the digital transformation process to happen rapidly. Because it will be a
trend that businesses, the public, and governments cannot stand outside of.
 Take the example of the e-commerce sector. In fact, e-commerce has been around for
quite some time; if we count from the emergence of giants like Amazon or Ebay, it's been 25
years. However, why has it been only in recent years that e-commerce has truly boomed and
threatened the existence of traditional retail channels? It's because we understand that the two
important pillars of any form of commerce, payment methods, and delivery, used to be too
'traditional'. In the period from 5 years ago, payment methods without cash were mainly
carried out through credit cards or cross-border transfer channels with poor security and
inconvenience. Similarly, for delivery methods, it often took time and incurred high costs. All
of these factors made users in the past less enthusiastic about e-commerce.