Accordingly, this department has delivered consultation on 28 science-technology missions of the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) People’s Committee. It has also conducted 105 new missions, 46 of which serve the four major industries of the city, the other 14 of which aid the 7 breakthrough programs and urban development management, and the rest help the computing field as well as other areas.
Many of the above missions are jointly carried out with related businesses in order to improve the product quality as well as better serve manufacturing and trading purposes.
Last year, DoST inspected 93 scientific-technological missions, printed 77 articles and 51 research results on domestic and international journals respectively. Via these missions, there were 5 new doctors and 29 new masters of science.
One of the most prominent activities in 2018 of DoST was the support for businesses to improve their productivity, quality and to renovate themselves, for startup ecosystems to form and develop.
Regarding the latter, DoST has constantly helped the infrastructure construction via events like providing a total surface area of around 2,525m2 for 24 state and private innovative startup support organizations that are operating in HCMC; expanding incubation centers and promoting their important roles; cooperating with the OpenLab model of businesses; attracting international financial organizations into connection activities to invest in incubation centers as well as potential innovative startups.
Impressive values have been creating from such activities to support startup ecosystems as the plan to hold events for the growth of startup ecosystems in the fields of Information – Communications Technology (ICT), mechanism, food processing, plastic, rubber processing, chemicals. Until December 2018, 35 activities in total were carried out, including 17 general ones, 9 specifically for the field of plastic – rubber processing – chemicals, and 9 other for ICT (achieving 100 percent of the yearly plan).
DoST directly or indirectly supported 711 startup projects (accounting for 101.57 percent of its yearly plan) via connection activities to investors, experts and consultation organizations; training sessions and exhibitions for products or services; working space provision. In general, in the period from 2016 – 2018, DoST already helped 1,677 projects.
The department also maintained the Speedup Program to provide budget for innovative startups via incubation centers. In 2018, it basically selected 20 newly registered projects, approved 2 projects, evaluated 10, and inspected 13 from 2017.
DoST has already selected 14 scientific-technological missions in 3 focused programs for this year.
In the summary meeting of DoST, its Deputy Director Nguyen Khac Thanh reported that the department consulted the HCMC People’s Committee on issuing 14 new documents to fulfill goals on scientific-technological activities and innovation in the period from 2015 – 2020. These pieces of legal paper are expected to be a legal corridor for other units and organizations to successfully carry out their own management missions. These documents are also supposed to become an encouraging mechanism for scientific-technological investment and development, aiming at the long-term goal of social-economic growth of the city.
According to Director of DoST Nguyen Viet Dung, the focused goal of 2019 is the increase in conducting missions and solutions to develop science-technology, creativity in order to form strong innovative startup ecosystems in HCMC.
Therefore, DoST will concentrate on perfecting supporting policies for research and development, commercialization of startup products, technology transfer, innovative startup. These policies should be more practical and suitable for specific activities. DoST will also improve the connection and cooperation platform among the four groups of educational institutes, research centers, businesses, and state offices, especially regarding the four focused industries of the city.
