Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong met Mr. Rick Howarth, the General Manager of Intel Products Vietnam
At the meeting, Mr. Rick Howarth, the General Manager of Intel Vietnam shared with Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong the progress of the company in Vietnam, which is doing very well. Since its opening in 2006, Intel Vietnam has recruited more that 1,000 employees and will reach 5 - 6,000 employees when it goes to full production. In 2010, Intel Vietnam's export turn over was 130 million USD.
As part of its growth strategy, Intel Vietnam is implementing two training programs with the objective of contributing to the development of Vietnam corps of engineers that would man-power the growing information technology industry of the country as well as strengthening the company's teams of engineers. For the last two year, the company has sponsored groups of Intel Vietnam Scholars to come to study at American universities. And recently, Thang Duy Vo, Anh Viet Ngo, Hoa Van Nguyen and Hung Minh Nguyen, seniors who came to Portland State University through the Intel Vietnam Scholars Program, successfully challenged 23 other finalist teams from other top national engineering schools such as UC Berkeley and MIT to win the $10,000 top prize May 5 at Walt Disney World in Florida. The second program, Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program (HEEAP), through which the company entered into partnership with the government agencies and academia to help modernize Vietnamese public higher education in engineering. In the first phase, Intel Vietnam has joined with USAID and Arizona State University in 2010 with a USD $5M, three-year commitment. After 2 year’s time, HEEAP has helped to bring more than 100 faculty members from 5 participating universities to the US. Given the program's success, Intel Vietnam and its partners will expand this project over the next five years.
Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong was greatly encouraged to learn of Intel Vietnam's strong progress. He commended Intel Vietnam's intiatives and its public-private approach to help further develop the skills and number of IT engineers in Vietnam, to meet the growing demand of both foreign and domestic businesses. He assured that the government of Vietnam will continue to improve the business enviroment for companies doing business in Vietnam.
