By Phuong Nguyen and Francesco Guarascio
(Reuters) -Vietnam’s President To Lam pledged to boost the domestic tech economy, as he met top U.S. firms in New York, including Meta, which pledged to expand investments in the Communist-ruled country with a population of 100 million.
In his first visit to the United States as Vietnam’s president, Lam is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden later on Wednesday.
In addition to Meta, Lam held private meetings with Apple, and financial companies Blackstone and Warburg Pincus, according to pictures of handshakes with the companies’ representatives published on Vietnam’s government portal.
Lam, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, Vietnam’s most powerful job, plans to meet Google later on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with his schedule, confirming a Reuters report from last week.
At the meeting with Lam on Monday, Meta’s President for global affairs Nick Clegg shared plans for production in Vietnam of virtual reality glasses, according to Vietnam’s government portal.
Meta, which has tens of millions of users in Vietnam of its Facebook social media, declined to comment about the report noting it was expecting to issue a statement next week.
Vietnamese state media had earlier reported that Clegg will attend an innovation event in Vietnam at the start of October.
At the meeting with Lam in New York, “Nick shared Meta’s commitment to support and expand investment programs and encourage innovation in Vietnam in the near future,” Khoi Le, Meta’s director for Vietnam, said on LinkedIn on Wednesday.
“This meeting marks an important step in our journey towards building a stronger presence in Vietnam and contributing to the country’s digital transformation,” he added.
No mention was made in public statements about controversial issues such as Vietnam’s requirement to store data in the country and frequent requests by Vietnamese censors to remove posts from Facebook.
At a separate business forum, Lam signed cooperation agreements with U.S. firms on energy, artificial intelligence and for a data centre, the government said.
Other participants included representatives of tech firm Amazon, payment company Visa, consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble and energy firm AES.
Lam “has made it absolutely clear that his presidency, his time as general secretary, they’re going to grow the tech economy,” Ted Osius, head of the US-ASEAN Business Council, the advocacy group which co-hosted the event, told Reuters.
In meetings with U.S. companies, Lam said Vietnam considered digital transformation as a driving force to take the country into a new era, according to the government portal.
“Developing the semiconductor and AI industries is … a strategic choice and a priority,” Lam said.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Phuong Nguyen, Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Louise Heavens)
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