¡¡¡¡HANOI, Sept. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Vietnam's economic experts have urged the domestic electronics industry to focus on producing value-added components and accessories with an aim to achieve an export value of 40-50 billion US dollars by 2002, according to a report of Vietnam News on Wednesday.

¡¡¡¡As multinational companies want to make the most of Southeast Asia's low labor costs to produce value-added electronics, Vietnamcan draw on investment from the multinationals to help develop thedomestic electronics industry if it increases its manufacture of high-value electronic components, the experts said.

¡¡¡¡Vietnam now has 32 foreign invested projects that manufacture electronic products with a total worth of more than 1.1 billion USdollars.

¡¡¡¡At present, all domestically manufactured office computers comefrom these foreign direct investment (FDI) electronic enterprises.They also manufacture 78 percent of the total number of radios andtelevision sets, 76.4 percent of medical equipment and 33 percent of other electronic items in the country.

¡¡¡¡The result is that the FDI economic sector contributed 84 percent of Vietnam's exports of electronics.

¡¡¡¡According to the experts, the domestic electronics industry needs to change its production strategy in order to produce value-added components and accessories.

¡¡¡¡They suggested the government assist the foreign electronics enterprises to change their production goals by outlining policiesto encourage them to reequip their factories to manufacture new products. Enditem

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