At the opening ceremony

They also touched upon ways to develop human resources in service of ITcollaboration and improve the capacity, scale and quality of cooperationprojects.

Apart from exchanges and business networking activities, the two-day event featuredexhibitions introducing products and solutions of Vietnamese and Japaneseenterprises.

On this occasion, the Vietnam-Japan IT Cooperation Committee and the ITInnovation and Strategy Centre of Okinawa prefecture of Japan signed amemorandum of understanding on cooperation.

In his opening remarks, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee LeTrung Chinh, said Da Nang has set up cooperative ties with Japanese partnersand cities like Yokohama, Nagasaki and Kisarazu.

With 177 projects worth over 800 million USD, Japan is the biggest foreign investorin Da Nang, making up 25 percent of the total foreign direct investment (FDI)in the city, Chinh said.

Besides, Japan is also the biggest software export market of IT firms in DaNang, accounting for more than 36 percent of the market share, he added.

Chinh said activities within the framework of Japan ICT Day 2019 are expectedto help expand cooperation between Vietnamese and Japanese businesses in the ITsector, especially digital transformation, big data and AugmentedReality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Da Nang is now the IT centre of Vietnam’s central region, with 93 percent outof over 3,800 businesses operating in the software and IT sector.

Up to 38 universities and vocational colleges in the city are offering ITtraining courses, recruiting 3,500 students each year.

Takeo Nakajima, Chief Representative of the Japan External Trade Organisation(JETRO) in Hanoi, cited an annual survey by the organisation as saying that about70 percent of Japanese firms operating in Vietnam said they are planning toexpand business in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

In 2018, 248 Japanese enterprises invested in the field of IT in Vietnam,making up 8 percent of the total amount of Japanese investment in the country,he said.

According to Junko Kawauchi, Vice President for Global Affairs of the JapanInformation Technology Services Industry Association (JISA), as of June 2019,Japan had lacked about 781,000 IT engineers and up to 95 percent of Japanesefirms said they are interested in employing Vietnamese engineers./.VNA