Hanoi Times - Vietnam will have to beef up education and training if it hopes to become one of the world’s top five guest worker providers and a major outsourcer in the next 10 years.
Trang Anh takes a look at how Vietnam can reach that target once IT companies have to set up shop in Vietnam and recruit skilled workers.
IT research and development requires a significant and educated workforce. Without it, industry growth would remain stagnant and investing companies will look for opportunities elsewhere, said Ajay Gupta, director of HP Lab in India.
Being the number one of world outsourcer, India is place of a number of world leading IT companies R&D centres. A product at R&D centre is a root enable to generate jobs for a large number of software engineers. Through promoting R&D is the easy way for the country to promote their technology industry especially software.
“India has invested hugely in education since the 1980s. The government saw the need for high-end engineering education, which has offered students the skills to meet industry demand,” said Gupta.
Like the HP Lab in India, most of the staff is local people who have created breakthrough innovations such as Gesture Key Board for inputting data, the 2D barcode for document securing as well as its TVPrintCast a synchronously delivering printable data along with television signals on existing television broadcasting networks.
“Vietnam is opening up, and because the country improved its telecom infrastructure the IT community feels more comfortable in coming over,” said Gupta.
Vietnam is going through what India went through at the end of 1990s and early 2000s once leading information technology companies placed their bases on research and development after building their manufacturing bases there.
India’s IT industry earned $29.5 billion in 2006 and has set targets of $60 billion in receipts by 2010. The number of employees surged to 1.3 million by 2005 from 284,000 in 1999.
IBM opened its Global Delivery Centre in India in 2,000 with just 50 engineers. By 2006, there were over 6,000 engineers employed at the centre. IBM also opened a similar centre in Vietnam in 2006. It hopes the 200 engineers it originally hired will mushroom to 2,000 by the end of next year.
Vietnam is home to 720 IT companies that employ 25,000 programmers. Annual revenue growth rates average out to between 30-40 per cent.
Vietnam also has an expatriate IT community like Viet Kieu which has been working and living in developed IT markets worldwide such as in the US and western Europe and is forming a crucial link between overseas customers and Vietnam-based developers by helping to reduce culture and language barriers.
Nguyen Trong Duong, deputy director of Information Technology Industry Department under the Ministry of Information and Communications, said the key for Vietnam was to promote its IT industry to boost human resources.
“It is sure that foreign investors to come and place their R&D in Vietnam if talented pool is available. The current human resource in Vietnam is good but limited,” said Duong.
Pham Tan Cong, general secretary of Vietnam Software Association, said Vietnam could maintain the annual human resource growth rate of 50 per cent like India with 25,000 engineers in 2006, 200,000 in 2010 and around 1.5 million by 2015.
“With the targeted number of engineers by 2015, Vietnam will stand behind only China, India and the US. The country has a great opportunity in the history to become an education and human resource hub of the world as well as a leading position country of software after 2015,” said Cong.
Cong proposed the Vietnamese Government boost private and foreign investment in education with international standards. Students will have one year to learn either English or Japanese to meet demand of Japan, US and Europe companies.
The information technology companies will also be attracted into education investment to have recruits or more staff, enabling to students to write software from the third school year at university.
According to the Global Outsourcing Report 2005 made by well-known specialists in the sector Mark Minevich from Going Global Ventures Inc and Frank-Jürgen Richter from Horaris, Vietnam was ranked among top 30 leading outsourcing software nations by 2015.
“Quality human resources is key to Vietnam, The country’s education system is excellent, with a focus on mathematics and logic that creates a ready supply of raw talent for the IT industry. Professional skills are taught by western training companies, which are training thousands of Vietnam programmers in dedicated centres across Vietnam,” the report said.
Under Vietnam’s commitment to the World Trade Organization, the Vietnamese Government accepted market-oriented training and education in science and technology, opening for foreign investors in providing training courses for local students especially in science and technology.
Foreign investors are also allowed to open wholly foreign-owned schools from the beginning of 2009.
According to the IT human resource development of Vietnam to 2020, the government will give a certain percentage out of the total one per cent of the state budget funding for science and technology to deploy R&D in IT, electronics and telecoms as well as establish a fund for supporting IT training.
Vietnam will expand IT education in electronics and telecoms in Hanoi, Haiphong, Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, Danang, Dalat, Thai Nguyen Vinh and Hue as well as diversifying IT training models including remote training and training at works.
The government is encouraging the expansion of certificate granting bases and deploying one year additional IT training for non-IT students at universities as well as the second IT engineering certificate along with non-IT bachelor. IT training will be available in all secondary and primary schools by 2015.
A shortage of software programmers, which has increased after international corporations, placed their bases in Vietnam such as Intel, IBM, Foxconn and Compal. Local companies have raised their remuneration for staff to a minimum level of $500. However, even at this salary level, Vietnam still has significant labour cost advantages. The global market will need an estimated one million programmers by 2008 and 10 million by 2015.
The country’s largest software company FPT has plans to raise its total staff to 10,000 later this year. Among its current staff, 30 per cent are graduates from its Aptech chain. Few of its staff study abroad.
Nguyen Kim Cuong, CMC vice president, said the company also planned to have 1,000 programmers by 2010, rising from its current 200 staff.
The measures for increasing IT staff include an international certificate test in Vietnam as well as the tuition of both training centres such as Aptech and vocational colleges.
The industry would need either secondary graduate with IT certificates to do for their projects instead of only university graduates.
Software international community acknowledges international certificates such as Microsoft Developer Certificate and having an international certificate will help students have a job immediately, while a company can assess right capability of its staff.
Cuong estimated that Vietnam had less than around 500 engineers with international certificates who often work for international companies in Vietnam.
