The software outsourcing sector is powering ahead again as many local firms reported better results last year than in 2008 and 2009 when the financial crisis struck the global economy.
Pham Tan Cong, general secretary of the Vietnam Software Association, said 2010 saw the outsourcing sector recovery gaining steam with its traditional markets like Japan and North America improving.
It was tough for Japan’s information technology industry in 2009, thus rattling the domestic software industry. Japan is a huge IT market with an annual turnover size of US$130 billion, said Cong.
As the economic crisis bit, Japanese IT companies shut down their Vietnam branches, hurting the software outsourcing sector in Vietnam that is seen as the third largest outsourcing market for Japanese companies.
“Japan companies are coming back with many deals clinched with Vietnamese software businesses,” Cong said.
He said he expected the sector to earn around US$1 billion from outsourcing deals, up from the US$800 million achieved in 2009.
HCMC’s Quang Trung Software City (QTSC) that is home to over 100 software companies has registered good business results as well.
Chu Tien Dung, chairman of Quang Trung Software City Development Company, told the Daily that companies based in this IT park in District 12 did better business last year. The number of poor-performing businesses, including those at risk of shutdown, fell about 60% last year compared with a year earlier.
In terms of revenue, the enterprises at QTSC attained average revenue growth of over 30% in comparison to 2009 due mainly to the many contracts from traditional markets such as Japan, North America and Europe.
Dung noted another factor that contributed to good revenue growth was that prices were stable and in some cases, higher than those at the height of the economic crisis.
Investment activity also started to revive at QTSC last year with 12 new software companies licensed into the park, three of them foreign. That was not a big number, Dung said, since the global software industry had yet to gain full recovery.
Source:-http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/science-technology/3764/software-outsourcing-firms-ride-out-tough-times.html
