APO Secretary-General Dr. Indra Pradana Singawinata (right) meets with Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Xuan Dinh to discuss productivity priorities and cooperation in the AI era.

APO Secretary-General Dr. Indra Pradana Singawinata met with Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Xuan Dinh on 14 August 2026 in Ho Chi Minh City to discuss how science, technology, innovation, AI, and green transformation can be translated into measurable productivity gains. The meeting also marked 30 years since Vietnam joined the APO in 1996 and underscored the evolution of the partnership from capacity building toward more strategic, nationally anchored cooperation.

Vice Minister Le Xuan Dinh outlined Vietnam’s ambition to accelerate productivity growth through science, technology, and innovation, with stronger application of digital technologies and Green Productivity across national, sectoral, local, and enterprise levels. He highlighted priority areas for 2026–27 cooperation, including enterprise-focused AI, digital transformation, green transformation, innovation management, technical expert support, and stronger linkages with APO Centers of Excellence.

Dr. Indra emphasized that the next productivity breakthrough will depend not simply on adopting new technologies but on building the capabilities that allow enterprises to use them effectively. He called for stronger links between technology adoption, management systems, workforce skills, standards, data readiness, and operational redesign and stressed that diffusion to small and medium-sized enterprises and local industries is as important as frontier innovation. He also highlighted the need to connect national productivity indicators with firm-level measures such as value added, defects, cycle time, downtime, delivery performance, and resource efficiency.

Looking ahead, both sides discussed using the APO-Vietnam Strategic Partnership Program as a platform to move beyond stand-alone activities toward a more integrated productivity agenda. Dr. Indra proposed a common implementation logic: diagnose the problem, pilot the solution, measure the result, and scale what works. He noted that the success of future cooperation should be judged not by the number of activities delivered but by whether AI, digital transformation, Green Productivity, and innovation produce visible productivity gains that can be replicated across enterprises and priority sectors.

The meeting reaffirmed a shared direction for the next phase of cooperation: turning technology, innovation, and sustainability into measurable productivity gains that can scale across enterprises, sectors, and regions.