Minister Nguyễn Chí Dũng attends the Vietnam Innovation Challenge 2022 programme in Hà Nội on Tuesday. — Photo courtesy of NIC

HÀ NỘI — The National Innovation Center (NIC) from the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and Meta Group launched the Vietnam Innovation Challenge 2022 programme in Hà Nội on Tuesday.

With the theme "Vietnam Innovation Challenge 2022: Innovation with transforming enterprises", the event is an annual programme within the framework of the Vietnam Innovation Initiative (InnovateVN), launched by NIC with the companionship of major domestic and foreign technology partners.

MPI Minister Nguyễn Chí Dũng said the programme is to seek innovative solutions around the world to solve current challenges, sharing knowledge of national importance towards a prosperous and sustainable future.

He said: "We call for synergies between the public sector, the private sector and socio-economic sectors at home and abroad to join hands to shape the world, building, testing and implementing innovative initiatives for a prosperous Việt Nam."

He added that Việt Nam aimed to take advantage of domestic enterprises, helping them grow their business and expand their exports, increasing jobs and easy access to international markets.

Vũ Quốc Huy, director of NIC, said: "Our goal is to attract investment to Việt Nam in a sustainable way, creating favourable conditions for local SMEs to join the value chain. The Vietnam Innovation Challenge 2022 program will focus on finding innovative solutions. Innovation and digital transformation to help improve the capacity of small and medium enterprises.

The programme focused on improving the governance capacity of the system of SMEs through increasing production and business efficiency, expanding revenue from new business models and new products, and improving business performance and labour productivity from new processes and new technologies, as well as strengthening linkages between FDI enterprises, large enterprises and local SMEs. It was also to promote and support local SMEs to participate actively, move up the ladder in global value chains, and strengthen linkage and effective policy dialogue between government and business.

Rafael Frankel, Public Policy Manager for South Asia and Southeast Asia, Meta Group, said: "Vietnam Innovation Challenge 2022 is a testament to Meta's commitment to accompany the government and other stakeholders. Enterprises in Vietnam in promoting innovation activities and national digital transformation."

He added: "We believe and expect that the solutions offered at the program will be the nucleus of strongly promoting the digital transformation process, improving the competitiveness of more than eight hundred thousand small and medium-sized enterprises in Việt Nam."VNS