Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) to increase Vietnam’s rankings in information and communication technology (ICT) as ICT is the foundation of all areas, including the digital economy.

PM Phuc made the above request as the country’s ICT rankings remain low and even tend to fall, while addressing a conference held on Tuesday by the MIC to deploy its tasks in 2019.

The World Economic Forum lowered Viet Nam’s rankings in this fields because of poor preparations for the 4^th industrial revolution, said PM Phuc.

The Government chief also tasked the MIC and the Government Office to improve Viet Nam’s e-Government rankings by at least 15 places compared to 2018.

The MIC was requested to focus on proposing policies to facilitate technological startups and increase the number of ICT engineers to one million soon.

Regarding social media, PM Phuc challenged the MIC to further raise the number of social media customers to use Vietnamese social networks. At present, 45 million Vietnamese people are using messaging app called Zalo.

Meanwhile, the MIC also needs to make social media environment increasingly healthy and those who spread false and slandering information must be strictly fined.

According to the MIC’s report, the ICT sector’s revenues were estimated to grow by 112.6% to around VND 2.65 quintillion in 2018.

Viet Nam is one of the first countries in the region to have boosted digital television transformation with around 65% population accessing to digital terrestrial television.

The country will enhance its telecommunications infrastructure, expand broadband network and develop 5G mobile connectivity this year./.