Putting businesses at the center
Mr. Tran Cao Vinh - Deputy Director of VNU-HCM - said that the 14th National Congress of the Party has just been successfully held, defining the period 2026-2030 as a breakthrough period to bring the country into the "era of national rise". In that era, businesses are identified as the center, the important driving force of the economy.
From the perspective of a training, scientific research and technology transfer center, VNU-HCM clearly recognizes that reality is posing a big problem: how to make Vietnamese businesses rise to lead in the context of double transformation. Mr. Tran Cao Vinh emphasized: "Competitiveness cannot only be based on exploiting resources and cheap labor, but must be based on productivity, quality, efficiency, and innovation.
Ho Chi Minh City always pays attention to and identifies businesses as the center, and the market as a measure for scientific research and technology development activities.
According to Mr. Le Thanh Minh - Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology, in the past time, Ho Chi Minh City has issued many policies to promote the "three-house" linkage model (State - School - Enterprise), including the implementation of building international standard research centers according to the COE Project. In addition, the city also implements prominent policies on attracting and retaining talent at public science and technology organizations, with the maximum salary for heads up to 120 million VND/month.
Adding information, Mr. Le Thanh Minh said that Ho Chi Minh City has implemented a project to commercialize research results and quickly bring products to the market. Accordingly, research organizations have autonomy in cooperating with businesses, self-valuing, commercializing and dividing benefits in production and business.
The city supports "capital bait" for businesses to complete products from the scale of laboratories to the market. When businesses have counterpart capital, the city will support without recalculating the state budget funds previously invested to form the product.
Technology capacity is available, but has not spread widely
From the perspective of the business community, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoa - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association, noted: "Most Vietnamese businesses still operate in stages with low added value, heavily dependent on processing, labor costs and short-term market exploitation. This model limits the ability to accumulate resources, invest in technology and upgrade business management. When the business environment fluctuates, market, financial or policy shocks easily reveal weaknesses in resilience and adaptability.
Meanwhile, Dr. Luong Viet Quoc - CEO of Real-time Robotics Joint Stock Company, shared that the ability to master core technology of Vietnamese enterprises is completely grounded in practice. For example, in the field of manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), enterprises do not only stop at assembling or processing, but have self-designed, developed and integrated synchronously from hardware, control software, automatic flight algorithms to real-time data processing solutions. Thanks to that, many UAV lines of Vietnam are capable of competing fairly with foreign products.
However, he also frankly acknowledged that this capacity is only concentrated in a few pioneering enterprises. The gap between the leading group and the majority of the rest shows that the competitiveness of the business sector has not been widely spread, easily leading to "exhaustion" if there is no appropriate support mechanism.
From the orientation of the 14th Party Congress to the policy practice of Ho Chi Minh City, it can be seen that businesses have been placed in the right central position, but to truly become a driving force for the economy to break through in the "era of rise", it is necessary to continue to improve mechanisms, spread innovation capacity and create conditions for more and more Vietnamese businesses to rise to master technology, improve added value and competitiveness.
