At a meeting with the Ministry of Information and Communications on March 14, Gen Narui said Japan is in need of human resources in the IT sector due to the declining birth rate of the country. Therefore, the northeastern Asian country has to hire a large number of high-skilled engineers from other countries to offset the shortage of labour in the sector.

Meanwhile, many Japanese IT enterprises are exploring opportunities for cooperation with Vietnam for the development of human resources in the IT sector.

Gen Narui pledged to give more support for the country in training IT engineers, especially in the field of open source software, and said the association is one of the world’s largest organisations providing certification for this field.

Vietnamese IT enterprises will not be able to handle tasks from the Japanese side without technical staff granted with open source certification. The certification will open a window of opportunity for Vietnamese IT engineers to go into global markets, including Japan, Gen Narui added.

Truong Minh Tuan, minister of Information and Communications, proposed the association and Vietnam’s Dong A University cooperate with Hanoi’s Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology to train engineers of open source for enterprises of the two countries.