That has some industry insiders thinking that Vietnam could one day replicate India's success in information technology. The transformation is already under way. In Ho Chi Minh City, British-owned SilkRoad Systems has hired 17 local programmers to write software for the likes of Jardine Fleming and Merrill Lynch. Much of that hope rests on the human capital at Hanoi's disposal. Universities in Ho Chi Minh City alone are churning out 2,000 IT graduates each year.
Foreign investors agree.
According to industry experts, Vietnamese programmers are even faster and better able to make decisions independently than their Indian counterparts. Standard connections are still tediously slow, due partly to government firewalls erected to block sites considered harmful and partly to the narrow bandwidth of international lines. High personal tax rates push up costs. Hanoi is taking some steps toward solving both of these problems. The two new software parks will offer direct Internet access, via dedicated gateways.