The Hanoitimes - The country’s information technology industry has set a revenue target of US$17 billion by 2015, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Software sales revenue would be $2 billion, hardware $12.5 billion and IT service $1.5 billion, the ministry said.

The plan to develop the country’s IT industry until 2015 and 2020 had been drafted by the ministry to be submitted to the Government later this year.

Under the draft plan, the average growth rate of the country IT industry would reach 17.5 per cent per year by 2015, with the hardware sector increasing 18 per cent a year, software by 15 per cent and digital content by 20 per cent.

Exports would account for more than 60 per cent of the total industry revenue.

The plan was to develop three production centres - in software, services and digital content - in HCM City, Ha Noi and Da Nang.

Three strong regions of hardware and electronics would be established in the north, centre and south.

The north, including Ha Noi, Hai Duong, Bac Ninh and Vinh Phuc provinces would earn a revenue of $5 billion; the central region of Da Nang and Thua Thien-Hue would post a revenue of $700 million; the southern region of HCM City and Binh Duong, Dong Nai provinces would earn a turnover of $6 billion.

The ministry aimed to develop two hardware and electronics businesses with an average revenue of over $2 billion and two software businesses with an average revenue over $200 million a year, plus two digital content businesses with a turnover above $500 million a year.

Some 50,000 IT engineers would be trained and become proficient in foreign languages.

The draft plan aimed to generate Made in Viet Nam hardware products for the domestic market, which could be exported to international markets.

Some open source software products would be localised to be used in State agencies. The plan aimed to develop a search engine in Vietnamese and three websites o­n procurement of goods in line with specific culture of Viet Nam.

The draft plan envisaged Viet Nam would be among countries with the most attractive outsourcing industry and HCM City, Ha Noi and Da Nang would be in a group of 10 emerging cities for outsourcing.

The plan also aimed to attract over $5 billion in foreign investment for the information technology industry.