Accordingly, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) has just issued its action program for 2020 to accomplish its assigned missions in Resolution No.02/NQ-CP.
In particular, MoST is going to continue monitoring the position of Vietnam in the GII, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); the Technology and Innovation Index in accordance with the report ‘Readiness for the Future of Production’ by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
To achieve this rating improvement, MoST will cooperate with related ministries, industries, and local authorities to boost sub-indices. Specifically, it will check and eliminate or simplify any unclear or unfeasible trading conditions. It will also update and publicize new administrative procedures related to business certificate issuing that have been applied since 2018 or 2019, along with a report on the effectiveness of these eliminations.
Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Pham Cong Tac stated that to sustainably increase GII, Vietnam needs to pay more attention to innovation input, especially indices about IT infrastructure, IT application, business environment, legal regulations, and the workforce.
In 2020, the Prime Minister has issued Instruction No.09/CT-TTg about facilitating innovative startup businesses. He also asked the Ministry of Education and Training to select potential technological startups in the higher education environment.
Presently, 3 support centers for innovative startup have been built in 3 universities to develop the innovative startup ecosystem in education. Solutions and suggestions on boosting startup activities in universities and on connecting businesses and educational institutes have been proposed.
One more practical action is the establishment of a capital transaction floor for startup entrepreneurs and a legal corridor for technological enterprises, specifically those in the fields of finance and banking. A mechanism of regulatory sandbox is researched and piloted so that businesses are able to develop and then experiment their new products or services.
Obviously, GII 2019 shows that the effort of Vietnam last year, especially on innovation input and output, reached positive results. There was a rise of 5 positions and 8 positions in the total spending on research and development and the knowledge-based products, respectively. They reveal the effective leading role and logical solutions of the government in ensuring the economic balance and macro-economy, while still able to attract sufficient social resources for the development of science and technology. They also signal the correct direction of the state leaders in encouraging technology transfer among businesses, improving working performance and competitiveness.
