Deputy Prime Minister Vũ Đức Đam gives a speech at the festival. — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Tùng

HÀ NỘI — The creative start-up ecosystem in Việt Nam has taken big steps in recent years, but there's much further still to go.

Deputy Prime Minister Vũ Đức Đam made the statement at the National Start-up Festival for Students that opened yesterday at the Hà Nội Water Resources University (HWRU).

Deputy PM Đam said that since the beginning of projects on creative start-ups in the early 2000s, up to now, the start-up movement had inspired a lot of young people to get involved.

Speaking about the country's achievements in more than 30 years of renovation, the Deputy PM noted "today's world is filled with fierce competition and everyone is determined, not just Việt Nam".

“A little slack, a little wrong step does not only mean being left behind, but we could be eliminated from the race, especially when the fourth industrial revolution is happening today. Although we have grown so fast, the overall level of development of Việt Nam, in particular, the level of economic development is still inferior to many countries,” he said.

For the country to develop rapidly and sustainably and achieve its goal of a prosperous society with high average incomes by 2035, the Deputy PM said it is necessary to step up reforms of the business investment environment and innovating education and training, which encourages creative start-ups.

Innovative start-ups should aim to utilise new technology platforms to create new products and services and to approach new markets, he said.

Deputy PM Đam appreciated the fact that many universities across the country had been focusing more on research and inspiring the creative start-up movement among students.

He suggested that in addition to equipping students with basic knowledge, schools needed to include teaching content with subjects on entrepreneurship skills, teamwork and encourage the students to build networks of friends and share start-up ideas.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Ngô Thị Minh said the festival had been held annually since 2017 to the project 'Support students, start-up students to 2025', often called Project 1665.

After three years of implementing Project 1665 and three times holding the National Start-up Festival for students, many outstanding results had been seen.

The number of ideas and projects participating in the national competition had doubled in quantity whereas the quality, feasibility and creativity of projects were also highly appreciated by judges.

The entrepreneurial spirit of students following the goals of Project 1665 had been strongly spread by implementing the series of 'Entrepreneur Journey Forum' for students at 60 educational institutions in 2020-21.

The attraction of the Student Competition 2020 with the idea of ​​starting a business had increased dramatically by bringing the technology element into the contest and adding two more rounds, the Training Round and the Online voting round on the website dean1665.vn.

Within 10 days of activating this website, it attracted nearly 700,000 participants and nearly 1 million sessions of voting for participating projects across Việt Nam and from more than 50 different countries around the world. — VNS