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Training – way to accelerate FDI disbursement
Economists say Vietnam needs to enhance human resource training and improve manpower quality to make favourable conditions for implementing foreign-invested projects and accelerate investment disbursement.
The shortage of qualified human resources is a key problem inhibiting Vietnam’s absorption of foreign direct investment.
FDI is rising in Vietnam and foreign investors are being attracted by the country’s low-cost labour. However, investors complain of the shortage of technicians and middle-level managers.
Investment in assembling industries may increase in the next couple of years to take advantage of Vietnam’s low labour costs, but in the future, when salaries increase, assemblers will move to other countries.
China and India have advantages over Vietnam in terms of market scale and labour costs. Vietnam has to compete with other developing countries that have more competitive labour costs, such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
The shortfall of qualified human resources influences the implementation of many big foreign-invested projects in Vietnam.
Taiwan’s Foxconn has registered to invest in a series of projects worth $5 billion in Vietnam which will require 300,000 workers. This is the largest FDI project in Vietnam. Foxconn has to build its own training centre to train engineers and workers to serve its project. If the human resources were available, Foxconn could save time in Vietnam.
Pham Quang Ngoc of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said without preparation of labour forces and appropriate economic policies, Vietnam can’t maintain its attractiveness and the gap between registered capital and disbursed capital will be widened.
Junichi Mori, of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) in Vietnam, emphasised that to pursue its industrialisation, Vietnam needs to develop highly-quality human resources from now though it has advantages in its un-skilled workforce.
Though the government has been exerting efforts to build up a network of vocational training centres, Vietnam is still facing shortages of technical workers and middle-level managers. The number of trained workers is modest and training quality is quite poor.
VNN
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