Gov’t encourages foreign firms to invest in training

VietNamNet Bridge – The Government has plans to amend a ten-year-old regulation in foreign investment, seeking to encourage foreign participation in labor training which in turn will help further attract foreign investment, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Nguyen Xuan Trung, deputy director of the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, said the Government’s Decision No. 06 effective since 2000 would be amended to engage foreigners in labor training. Those foreign enterprises joining this sector will be given investment incentives, including preferential taxes, Trung said at a meeting between Japanese businesses and Vietnamese investment officials on Wednesday.

Vietnam has paid attention to training its workforce to meet labor demands at some 200 industrial zones in Vietnam, but investment including foreign funds into this sector remains low, he added.

Vietnam’s workforce now amounts to 10 million employees, but skilled laborers account for only 10% and the number is expected to reach 20 and 40% in 2012 and 2010 respectively. There are now 1.6 million employees working in foreign-invested companies.

At the meeting, organized on the occasion of a Japanese business delegation visits the city, some Japanese firms doing business in southern Vietnam said they faced difficulties in recruiting skilled laborers, especially in information technology.

“There are several IT training centers in Vietnam, but not all of them are qualified, affecting the quality of IT workers,” Trung admitted to the Daily.

Several Japanese executives said at the meeting they were also worried about the rising labor cost in Vietnam after the Government issued a new regulation to increase the minimum salary by 20% to VND1.2 million for unskilled workers.

However, Nakanishi Hirota, FDI senior adviser with the Japan External Trade Organization, brushed aside such concerns, saying rising salaries in Vietnam have been offset by the sharp appreciation of Japan yen.

The meeting was organized for discussions between local officials and a Japanese delegation of nine Aichi prefecture officials and executives of six Japanese companies.

The delegation is here from December 21 to look into Vietnam’s investment environment. Some of them said that they had the intention to move production to developing countries, and met on Wednesday with Aichi’s companies operating in southern Vietnam to gain experiences in investing in the country.

VietNamNet/SGT