According to Minister Nguyen Chi Dung, the semiconductor industry has witnessed rapid growth and significant impact in many countries over the past 20 years. From 2001 to 2021, the global semiconductor industry grew by 14% annually, reaching revenue of nearly 600 billion USD as of 2023. The semiconductor industry is expected to continue its robust growth, reaching 1 trillion USD by 2030.
In this context, many countries have implemented various specialized and competitive mechanisms and policies. Singapore has announced its “Electronics Transformation Roadmap” to invest more than 19 billion USD in the semiconductor industry over five years. South Korea unveiled the “System Semiconductor Belt” strategy with a plan to spend 450 billion USD over ten years.
India has launched the “Semiconductor India Program” initiative with a budget of 9.1 billion USD, providing support of up to 50% of costs. The United States has enacted the CHIPS Act to provide 52 billion USD in funding to support the semiconductor industry. China has invested a massive 120-150 billion USD in the semiconductor industry since 2014.
“The global chip race is heating up, but Vietnam has a ‘once-in-a-millennium’ opportunity to participate and assert itself in the global semiconductor industry value chain”, the Minister emphasized.
MULTIPLE ADVANTAGEOUS CONDITIONS
Specifically, according to the “head” of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnam has many advantages to assert its readiness for the semiconductor industry. These include:
Firstly, strong political determination from the central to local levels.
Secondly, a favorable investment and business environment attracting many large FDI enterprises in the electronics sector.
“There are currently more than 50 enterprises in the semiconductor industry operating in Vietnam, such as Intel, Amkor, Hana Micron (packaging, testing); Ampere, Marvell, Cadence, Renesas, Synopsys, Qorvo (design); Lam Research, Coherent (equipment manufacturing) …”, the Minister said.
Thirdly, there is a high-quality, cost-effective labor force already working in the electronics industry that can be easily transitioned, with more than 50% of the population under 30 years old (the golden population period) and approximately 1.8 million university and college graduates annually.
Fourthly, Vietnam has upgraded its comprehensive strategic partnership relations with most countries with developed semiconductor industries.
“The Joint Statement on Upgrading Vietnam-US Relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership clearly states two areas of breakthrough cooperation: innovation and high technology, including the semiconductor industry. Notably, Vietnam is one of the few countries with which the US has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation to develop the semiconductor industry ecosystem, with an emphasis on cooperation in developing human resources for the industry,” said the Minister.
HUMAN RESOURCES ARE AN OUTSTANDING ADVANTAGE
With an abundant labor supply and a high-quality workforce, Minister Nguyen Chi Dung affirmed that human resources are Vietnam’s greatest and most significant advantage compared to other countries in the world.
“Therefore, focusing on investing in, training, and retraining the workforce to enable them to join the labor market as soon as possible is a strategic direction,” emphasized the Minister.
Accordingly, the Project on “Human Resource Development for the Semiconductor Industry by 2030, with a Vision to 2045” sets the target of training 50,000 engineers for the semiconductor industry covering all stages of the value chain. Of these, 15,000 will be engineers in semiconductor chip design and 35,000 in other areas of the semiconductor industry; at least 5,000 of these engineers will have specialized expertise in artificial intelligence. Approximately 1,300 lecturers with international qualifications will be trained.
To determine this target, the Project’s drafting committee synthesized the directives of the Government, the Prime Minister, and the current and future market demands over the next five to twenty years. Simultaneously, it is based on the results of a survey on the training capacity of major universities involved in training related, suitable, and correct majors for conversion.
However, according to the Minister of Planning and Investment, in the current context, in the initial stage, Vietnam should focus on training human resources to participate in design, packaging, testing, and other stages related to the production of equipment, materials, and chemicals.
Vietnam also needs at least four national-level shared semiconductor centers with equipment meeting international standards located at national universities and regional universities in the North, Central, and South regions, as well as at the National Innovation Center and approximately 18 basic-level semiconductor training centers at 18 technical universities to meet the requirements.
The total cost of implementing the Project by 2030 is estimated at approximately 26,000 billion VND, including approximately 17,000 billion VND from the state budget and approximately 9,000 billion VND from socialized sources.
