India invites Vietnam to set up electronics cluster city

New Delhi: The Government on Thursday asked Vietnam to set up an electronics cluster in India.

India and Vietnam signed two memorandums of understanding (MoU) for partnership in the field of information, communications and technology (ICT).

The first MoU was on telecom regulation between the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority. The second was on spectrum management between Wireless Planning & Coordination Wing (WPC), DoT and the Authority of Radio Frequency Management, Vietnam.

Joint panel

Accordingly, Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal and his counterpart from Vietnam Nguyen Bac Son have decided to set up a six-member joint committee to work on a roadmap for collaboration in the field of ICT.

The joint committee will comprise six persons (three persons from each country) and the representatives from India will comprise one person each from the DoT, Department of Electronics and IT and Posts.

It was also decided that the first meeting of the joint working group should take place within next two months.

“They (Vietnam) will nominate three people and within two months they will chalk out a roadmap of collaboration for the future,” Sibal told reporters after the meeting.

He said the roadmap for investment by Vietnam will also be set once the joint committee meets.

“We have suggested that they should set up an electronics cluster in the form of a city,” Sibal said, adding that the joint committee would set out specific programmes through which this collaboration will take place.

He said the cluster can come up on the Delhi–Mumbai corridor, and that it could be named as ‘Ho Chi Minh’. Both the ministers said that a significant work for cooperation could be ready by later this year when a high level of Vietnam leaders will visit to India.

Electronics manufacturing

Both the ministers unanimously have agreed that electronics manufacturing, software services, standards setting, cyber security, spectrum management, ICTs regulation, cooperation on multilateral platforms and disaster management in coastal areas are some of the areas, the countries could cooperate with each other.

Considering the large young population with ICT skill sets, the opportunities are abundant to synergise strengths of each other, the Vietnam minister said.

He acknowledged the Indian support in ICT capacity building for Vietnam students in CDAC India and in establishing supercomputing facility in Vietnam.

India is supporting to establish a high performance computing centre at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.