Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính at the fifth National Startup Festival for students. VNA/VNS Photo

THỪA THIÊN-HUẾ — Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính attended the opening of the fifth National Start-up Festival for students in Huế City, the central province of Thừa Thiên-Huế, on Saturday.

Expressing his delight at the robust start-up spirit and aspirations of students, PM Chính said that start-up and innovation is an important resource for each country, especially during the era of globalisation, international integration and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

He highlighted the Party and State's great attention and efforts to encourage and support start-up and innovation activities, which have helped spread the start-up campaign across the nation and among people from all walks of life, especially the youth.

He noted that after nearly five years of implementation, the project to support pupils and students' start-ups until 2025 has attracted nearly 2,600 start-up projects and more than 4,000 start-up ideas and projects in the field of vocational training.

To date, the country has attracted more than 60 adventure funds, while over 3,000 start-ups have been launched successfully, and nearly 100 universities have included start-up into their curricula. At the same time, 98 incubators have been set up in schools.

The Hồ Chí Minh Communist Youth Union at all levels have organised more than 3,000 start-up contests, drawing nearly 370,000 youngsters with nearly 14,000 ideas, while assisting nearly 16,000 start-up projects at a cost of nearly VNĐ700 trillion (US$29.75 million).

However, the Government leader held that the growth of Việt Nam’s start-up ecosystem has yet to meet the potential, while the youth have still faced many barriers and difficulties in implementing their start-ups.

He asked ministries, sectors and localities to continue to create favourable conditions, environment and legal foundation for youngsters to launch start-ups.

It is necessary to review, amend and supplement mechanisms and policies to encourage and protect the youth during the start-up and innovation process, while giving them assistance in capital, infrastructure, human resources and tax policies, and associating start-ups in schools with the settlement of current issues, he said.

He also stressed the need to promote the growth of incubators and start-up support centres for students.

The PM asked ministries, sectors and localities to support start-up and innovation activities, and strengthen the commercialisation of youngsters' products.

Universities and training facilities should boost the growth of the start-up ecosystem in the education-training sector, he requested.

PM Chính also asked the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union to continue to inspire youngsters and spread the desire for start-up and innovation among them, thus nurturing start-up and innovation ideas of pupils and students.

He underlined that the Party and State always welcome all start-up and innovation ideas to deal with bottlenecks in various sectors, especially digital transformation, artificial intelligence, blockchain, Internet of Things, green, digital, circular economy, nano economy, and aerospace technology, thus catching up with developed countries in the world.

The annual festival, part of the project to support pupils and students in launching their start-ups, will last until March 26 with various activities including exhibitions on start-ups, forums and conferences on supporting start-ups in high schools, and the final round of a start-up contest for students. — VNS