Software companies need help
Most representatives of Vietnamese software companies at a workshop on challenges and prospects for the software industry in Hanoi on April 23 said that they need the government’s assistance to deal with their difficulties.
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| The workshop on April 23 in Hanoi. |
Since late 2008, Vietnamese software firms have been seriously affected by the global economic meltdown, particularly exporting firms. A small number of them haven’t suffered from a fall in revenue but their profit has decreased remarkably.
According to a report by the Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa), the software industry grew at 20% last year, earning total revenue of $600 million, 10% less than in 2008 and much less than the expectation.
Local software companies said that they were severely hit by the global economic downturn, but they can’t deny that their colleagues in India and China still grew well: China obtained a growth rate of 29.8%, earning $110.8 billion, and India, 24.4% and $52 billion.
“I would like to frankly say that we are far behind India and China and I don’t believe that Vietnam will become a powerful country in terms of software,” said the Director of the TMA Software Company, Nguyen Huu Le.
Speaking about the current situation of the software industry and difficulties of software firms, Le said that though transmission line charges have been cut in the past ten years, they are still high. Further, human resources are in short supply.
“There is no powerful software country like Vietnam where a newly-graduated student asks for the starting salary of $500,” Le said.
To develop in a new direction – Research and Development (R&D) – Le petitioned the government to have special policies for importing hi-tech equipment to serve R&D.
The General Director of the MISA Software Company, Lu Thanh Long, listed popular difficulties for packaged software producing firms: requiring huge capital at the beginning and going bankrupt quickly if delivering products at wrong moments.
Long worries that while all kinds of inputs have increased, such as wages, electric charges, marketing and advertising fees, there is an unwritten rule that the prices of software and telecom equipment have to increase more slowly.
He talked about the sad fact that while foreign embassies in Vietnam work enthusiastically to seek markets for their companies, overseas Vietnamese embassies do virtually nothing.
Worrying about the competition and rule of foreign companies in the fields of content software, Le Hong Minh, Director of Vinagames, said that Vietnamese companies face difficulties and are at a disadvantage compared to foreign ones in doing business related to services requiring hi-tech and investment. Local firms are also at a disadvantage in content control. Minh hopes that the government will pay more attention to local content providers.
HC
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