Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications has reportedly urged the country’s telcos to find new growth opportunities in digital as the sector’s growth continued to slow down in 2023.
According to the Vietnam Economic Times, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Mạnh Hung said in an interview that the growth of telecoms operators has not kept pace overall with the country’s GDP growth.
While Vietnam’s GDP growth in 2023 was just over 5% – missing government targets and down from 8% the previous year – Hung said that Viettel’s domestic telecoms business increased by 2-5% in the last few years, while VNPT has only seen 2-3% growth, and MobiFone 4-10%.
Hung said that he expects telcos to be growing their businesses between 5% and 10% per year.
Hung claimed the sluggish growth was due to a saturated telecoms market with core voice and SMS revenues being cannibalised by OTT services, while telcos have not yet found a suitable growth business to replace those revenue streams.
The minister urged telcos and digital technology businesses to throw their R&D efforts into developing digital applications for industries, which would also count under the government’s “Make-in-Vietnam” policy.