The Vietnamese government will focus on the development of the digital economy as this will be the locomotive for the country’s fast and sustainable growth, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at the 2019 Vietnam Economic Forum in Hanoi on Thursday.

The annual VEF, which was first held in 2017, offers a platform for intellectual convergence, exchange, sharing, learning and connection of domestic organizations and external enterprises on economic issues.

Finding ways to fortify the foundation of fast and sustainable growth for Vietnam’s economy was high on the agenda of the plenary and high-level policy dialogue held as part of the forum this year.

In his closing remarks, PM Phuc underlined that “fast and sustainable” is the motto for the strategy and action of the government in the years to come.

The head of government emphasized that ‘fast’ and ‘sustainable’ do not contradict each other as they may sound.

“They are in fact the necessary and sufficient conditions for high growth over the long term, especially in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Phuc elaborated.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, together with the digital economy, will be a big trend that opens up several opportunities for Vietnam to catch up with developed countries.

“One of the issues that the government will focus on this year and the following years is giving more priority to science and technology, and infrastructure - especially smart and digital infrastructure - in order to grab the opportunities brought about by the Industry 4.0,” the PM said.

However, Vietnam’s digital economy is behind other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), even though the country’s telecommunication infrastructure has a wide coverage and Vietnamese people, especially the young population, adapt quickly to technology, according to Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung.

To keep pace with other ASEAN countries in terms of digitization of the economy, Hung emphasized the role of re-training at high school level and above so Vietnamese workers can participate in the Industry 4.0 economy.

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