Firm-Level Technology Adoption in Vietnam

This paper describes the results of a new firm survey to measure technology use and adoptionimplemented prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. It analyzes the use and adoption of technology among Vietnamesefirms and identifies some of the key barriers to adoption and diffusion. The analysis offers new and importantstylized facts on firm-level use of technologies. First, although access to the internet is almost universal inVietnam, firms had low digital readiness to face the COVID-19 pandemic; and the share of establishments withtheir own website, social media, and cloud computing is still small. Second, the use of Industry 4.0 technologies isincipient. Third, the technology gap with the use of frontier technologies in some general business functions,such as quality control, production planning, sales, and sourcing and procurement, is large. Fourth, themanufacturing sector faces the largest technological gap, larger than services and agricultural firms. The analysis ofthe main barriers and drivers to technology adoption and use shows the importance of good management quality fortechnology adoption, and that there is a technology premium associated with exporting activities. Finally, the analysisalso shows that firms are largely unaware of the available public policy support for technology upgrading.