New momentum

After nearly 3 years of construction, the new facility of the National Innovation Center at Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park (NIC Hoa Lac) has been completed.

NIC Hoa Lac, the second facility of NIC, has a total construction cost of nearly 1,000 billion VND, without using the state budget. This facility has an area of ​​nearly 5 hectares, with 2 working buildings with 6 floors each, including an international conference center with about 1,500 seats.

In particular, there is also space for businesses and partners to come to work and set up research and development facilities; businesses and partners participating in NIC's innovation ecosystem will enjoy many preferential mechanisms and policies on tax, land, visas... according to Decree 94/2020/ND-CP.

In addition to those tangible advantages, NIC Hoa Lac also has an “invisible” attraction. It is a network of 2,000 members, including outstanding Vietnamese experts and intellectuals at home and abroad in 20 countries and territories; many investment funds and multinational corporations. Many cooperation programs of NIC with domestic and foreign partners are operating quite effectively, such as ADB Ventures project, Vietnam Venture Summit, Vietnam Innovation Challenge, Google for Startups, etc.

To date, regulations and rules on the organization and operation of the centers have been issued relatively fully. However, the mechanism for receiving domestic and foreign funding resources still has many difficulties, so it has not been possible to mobilize large resources to implement large-scale support programs for innovative startups. There are no unified mechanisms and policies guiding the establishment and operation of innovation centers.

With the orientation of focusing on the semiconductor industry, the system of regulations and policies specific to this industry needs to be reviewed and supplemented, including the development of shared centers for training and research.

According to experts, there is a very practical and specific proposal: to soon complete the planning approval procedures and arrange land funds for NIC to build a service area for experts. Without attracting this high-quality workforce, NIC will only be a normal type of administrative center.

According to the Global Innovation Index 2023 report, Vietnam is ranked 46/132 economies, up 2 places compared to 2022. In this encouraging trend, it is entirely reasonable to expect that NIC and NIC Hoa Lac in particular will be a new driving force for innovation; thereby contributing to the renewal of the growth model of the entire economy based on the development of science and technology. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done to turn that expectation into reality.

BAO VAN

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