Japanese Businesses Should Invest in Vietnam’s Semiconductor Industry Now

On the morning of May 27, in Mie Prefecture, Japan, as part of the working trip to attend the 30th Future of Asia Conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung and the delegation visited and worked with Kioxia Group.

Established in 2018, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory Corporation) is a leading memory manufacturer in Japan with a capitalization of about $8.1 billion.

Kioxia specializes in developing and manufacturing flash memory (NAND) and solid-state drives (SSD) for various fields such as cloud computing, smartphones, supercomputers, and automobiles.

Up to now, the Group has received a total of 50 Vietnamese employees, of whom 9 are currently working at the factory in Mie Prefecture, and 3 engineers are working at the Group’s research center. Kioxia’s leaders said that Vietnamese employees are well treated, highly qualified, hard-working, and responsible, and can completely take on positions equivalent to Japanese engineers.

After listening to Mr. Wantanbe Tomoharu, Executive Vice President, introduce the Group, the Deputy Prime Minister highly appreciated Kioxia’s development and believed that in the context of exploding storage demand, Kioxia’s role would become increasingly important in shaping the global digital technology infrastructure.

Expressing his delight that Vietnamese employees are well treated and have made positive contributions to the Group and the Japanese economy, the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that Kioxia establish a database to connect employees who have worked for the Group; support highly qualified Vietnamese engineers who master technology and techniques and wish to start businesses and participate in the semiconductor supply chain; and cooperate in training and internship programs for Vietnamese students.

Vietnam has issued a strategy for the development of the semiconductor industry, established a National Steering Committee for the development of the semiconductor industry, with the Prime Minister as the Head of the Committee, and is synchronously implementing many solutions to develop the semiconductor ecosystem, such as establishing a support investment fund, deploying a project to train 50,000 semiconductor engineers, attracting FDI, and promoting public-private and private-private cooperation in the semiconductor industry.

The Deputy Prime Minister proposed that the two sides strengthen cooperation to open a large-scale, well-organized, and high-quality training center; build data centers and research and development centers, and especially coordinate with the People’s Committee of Hanoi to soon sign an MOU to materialize the project of investing in the production of AI semiconductor chips in Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park.

“Vietnam is gathering all favorable conditions to develop the semiconductor industry, and Kioxia’s choice of Vietnam is a very wise decision,” emphasized the Deputy Prime Minister, wishing Kioxia to grow stronger and have more investment projects in Vietnam soon.

Thanking the Deputy Prime Minister for his encouragement and good sentiments towards the Group, Mr. Wantanbe Tomoharu said that Kioxia would study and implement in practice the Deputy Prime Minister’s insightful directions on expanding the reception of Vietnamese engineers, participating in training human resources for the semiconductor industry, and strengthening cooperation with ministries, sectors, and enterprises of Vietnam.