A shortage of quality human resources has stymied the development of information and communication technology in Viet Nam despite its vast potential.
Viet Nam was the eighth largest software producer in the world last year. After average growth of 29 per cent in the last five years, according to the White Book 2011 which provides data about ICT, the country's revenues last year topped US$1 billion, a four-fold increase since 2005.
Exports accounted for 35 per cent of the figure.
But Dang Huu, former head of the National Steering Committee for Information and Communication Technology, said that while Viet Nam generally had an advantage in the global labour market because of its large and young workforce, it had not taken advantage of this to achieve a breakthrough in the ICT sector.
Ngo Van Toan, deputy general director of the US-based Global CyberSoft Viet Nam, laid the blame on the shortage of skilled human resources for hindering the development of the ICT industry in the past 10 years.
This had also caused a majority of domestic software companies to remain small, precluding their global competitiveness, especially in projects requiring a large workforce, he told Sai Gon Tiep Thi.
Ten years after the industry began to develop, the number of IT companies with several hundred workers remained very small, he said.
Nguyen Huu Le, head of TMA Solutions, Viet Nam's leading software outsourcing company, said this made them incapable of having long-term policies or the financial capability to develop.
Toan said the IT industry had been largely affected by the shortcomings in quality and scale despite the increase in the number of IT experts compared to a decade ago.
The number of engineers in the ICT industry almost doubled in five years to 260,000 last year. On average, they earn over $4,200 a year, more than double the wages in industry.
Viet Nam hopes to have a million ICT engineers by 2020, meaning more than 60,000 will be added each year.
Training, the bugbear
The 2010 White Book said demand for ICT courses at colleges and universities had increased sharply between 2006 and 2009, but the number of graduates finding jobs in the ICT industry only grew by around 11 per cent.
Recruiters blamed this paradox on the nature of training at the universities and colleges, saying it was too theoretical and did not foster creativity or initiative in students. They also said the curricula were outdated.
Analysts said since ICT was a global industry requiring human resources with international-quality training, training centres needed to update and improve their education methods and curricula.
This was a critical factor in improving the quality of human resources in the industry, they said.
The 2011 White Book says the ICT, electronics, and telecom sectors will need 411,000 professionally trained workers in the next five years, including 217,000 university and college graduates.
In 2010 there were 277 universities and colleges providing training in these fields.
At FPT, one of the country's top software companies, demand for human resources increased by 30-40 per cent annually, its deputy general director, Pham Phuong Dat, said. The company is hiring 1,500 new workers this year and this figure is expected to rise to 18,700 in 10 years' time, but Dat said it was not easy to find quality workers.
Toan said: "The two major factors deciding the development of the IT sector are the environment for growth and human resources, which are both still poor."
The general director of CSC Viet Nam, Ngo Hung Phuong, said training and workforce development in the ICT sector had improved but was still deficient.
The number of large companies in the field was small and not growing, and only big companies were able to use less experienced workers efficiently, he said.
Besides, Viet Nam was losing its advantage in the global ICT market, since the employee turnover ratio had doubled to 15 per cent in the last five years.
Meanwhile, India has managed to reduce its expenses on hiring from around 30-35 per cent to at least 15 per cent.
vietnamnet.vn
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