“Vietnam should not pick a single spearhead sector but instead build a digital-economy foundation for the whole of society. A qualitative transformation of the economy into a digital environment will spur creativity, help narrow gaps, and gradually enable us to catch up with developed countries,” said Prof. Ha Ton Vinh, director of the Executive Education Program at California Miramar University in Vietnam and a senior Asia-region consultant to the World Bank, in an interview with The Saigon Times. The digital economy is the future The Saigon Times: In pursuit of high and sustainable growth in the coming years, Vietnam has set out to establish a new growth model with the digital economy as a central pillar. How do you assess this choice? What comparative advantages does Vietnam have to pin its hopes on the digital economy? – Prof. Ha Ton Vinh: In the past, people used to say that all roads lead to Rome. Applied to the global economy today, all roads lead to the digital economy. The digital economy has penetrated every sphere of socio-economic life. In agriculture, for example, robots use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and spray herbicides; in tourism, blockchain technology is applied to airline ticketing […]