VietNamNet Bridge – An additional 100,000 information technology workers will be needed in HCM City by 2010, according to participants at an IT seminar held in HCM City yesterday.

HCM City has around 25,000 IT engineers in the software and hardware industry.

The IT industry this year contributed 1.5 percent of the city’s GDP and by 2015 the amount is expected to be 3 per cent, according to city’s Department of Information and Communications.

The application of IT in tourism, entertainment, banks and securities companies has become widespread.

Pham Ngoc Tuan, general director of the Sai Gon Postel Corporation, said Viet Nam’s membership in the World Trade Organisation had opened up trade and created more opportunities in the industry.

Many of the world’s leading IT companies have set up operation in the country and introduced the latest IT technologies.

A staff shortage in the industry, however, looms.

Ha Van Liem, deputy general director of Global Cybersoft, a software producer, predicted it would need 1,000 more engineers through 2010.

HCM City has around 25,000 IT engineers in the software and hardware industry.

In 2004, there were 18 universities offering IT training, but that has risen to 24 schools, training 10,000 new graduates every year.

Companies, however, complain about the quality of the IT graduates.

According to a survey conducted by HCM City-based Quang Trung Software City, more than 46 per cent of IT engineers lack professional knowledge and most job candidates have to receive additional training from the companies that hire them.

The lack of foreign language skills is also a serious problem among IT engineers, as more and more foreign IT firms open offices in Viet Nam.

Forty per cent of IT graduates cannot speak English, and many IT programmes do not include English classes.

Lack of creativity and practical, rather than theoretical, knowledge are two other concerns.

(Source: Viet Nam News)