Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - To maintain a high growth rate ofexports, it was necessary to target new trends, including semiconductors, saidexperts.

The scale of this market hit more than 600 billion USD last year,and is forecast to reach 1.4 trillion USD by 2029.

Vietnam is a very open economy, with total import-export turnoverreaching 200 per cent of GDP, making the economy vulnerable to externalfluctuations, said experts.

Economic expert Nguyen Dinh Cung, former director of the Central Institute forEconomic Management (CIEM) told DoanhNhan Viet Nam (Vietnamese Businessman) online magazine that Vietnam’seconomy was very open and was becoming more and more open. Therefore, theeconomy was susceptible to even external factors.

Finding a solution to this problem, experts say that to avoid externalinjuries, Vietnam needs to change soon.

Pointing out the weakness of the Vietnamese economy, Cung said there were threeimportant components including the FDI enterprise sector, the private sectorand the State-owned enterprise sector.

However, these sectors had not been closely linked and unified with each other,said Cung.

To enhance the economy's resilience to external factors, these componentsneeded to be more closely linked, he said.

When exports tended to weaken, they need support from the domestic market andvice versa, he added.

Cung predicted that the economy would continue to have an important drivingforce from the FDI and export sectors in the future, but for sustainabledevelopment, fundamental changes were needed.

“To attract FDI and improve export growth, we must not continue to rely on theadvantage of low prices,” he said, adding major countries are currently tendingto change their thinking and strengthen their foundations.

These countries are increasing their self-reliance in controllingthe supply chain by moving factories to their home country or closer countries,which has caused a significant impact on the supply chain.

The good news is that Vietnam’s position is increasingly growing as it hadbecome an important partner of many large countries, said experts.

The country has also just upgraded its relationship with the US to the level ofa comprehensive strategic partnership.

This event has opened up many opportunities for Vietnam, especially inattracting investment in fields with high technology content and high addedvalue such as the semiconductor industry.

Recently, leading US businesses and corporations in the field of semiconductorsalso assessed that Vietnam has many potentials and opportunities to develop thesemiconductor industry ecosystem.

These businesses also said they were studying the possibility of locating chipfactories in Vietnam.

At the recent visit of US President Joe Biden, many large US semiconductorbusinesses such as Intel, Amkor, Marvell, and GlobalFoundries signed acommitment to invest in Vietnam. They assess that high-quality human resourcesand the improving capacity of businesses and training facilities in Vietnam arethe necessary factors, not cheap human resources.

It can be seen that the trend of competing with cheap human resources haspassed. Previously, Vietnam’s initial investment and export activities weremostly in low value-added sectors such as textiles, garments and footwear.

After that, the country has quickly moved up the value chain, developing intoan important electronics assembly centre thanks to the investment participationof a number of technology "giants".

Typically, Samsung, up to now, its investment has reached 18 billionUSD, accounting for about one-quarter of Vietnam’s export value.
This has also encouraged other tech giants, especially Apple, toexpand their operations.

However, experts assessed that to maintain export momentum, it was necessary toattract and develop fields with high technology content such as thesemiconductor industry because this was the leading trend in the future.

The scale of the global chip market was about more than 600billion USD last year, and it was forecasted that it would reach 1,400 billionby 2029, an opportunity for Vietnam in this huge giant cake, said Nguyen Mai,Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises (VAFIE).

Semiconductor technology is a 'story of the whole world', developed countrieswere giving incentives to expand research and production for this industry,said Mai.

Vietnam did not have much money to invest, so it had to rely onFDI capital attraction for development, he added.

Samsung and Intel are two electronics giants and also leading enterprises inthe semiconductor industry.

Intel has increased the investment capital of this project to nearly 1.5billion USD in 2021, and is planning to invest more to expand the factory in Vietnam.

Samsung also announced plans to produce semiconductor components in Vietnam.Mass production of semiconductor chip grid products at SamsungElectro-Mechanics Vietnam factory in Thai Nguyen province is expected to becarried out at the end of this year, after trial production is completed.

Two prominent semiconductor projects this year are the Hana Micron Vina factoryin Bac Giang province, which has just been inaugurated, and Amkor Technology inBac Ninh province, which is expected to be completed in October.

Choi Chang Ho, Chairman of Hana Micron Vina, said that the company planned toincrease its total investment to over 1 billion USD by 2025, annual revenue isexpected to reach 800 million USD and create 4,000 jobs for Vietnamese./.