ICT industry faces multipronged challenges: Pikom
- Brain drain, declining enrolment, graduate unemployability may also stymie industry growth
- Curriculum restructure, certification and consciousness at schools had to address problem
THE Malaysian statistics and communications generation (ICT) industry may be hampered from growing similarly as it remains plagued through a few complex and essential issues that would lead to the derailing the state's objectives, suggested the National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom).
Pikom chairman Cheah Kok Hoong (p.c) said its state-of-the-art ICT Job Market Outlook document has raised a few urgent worries, specifically, the persevering with mind drain skilled with fleeing Malaysian ICT experts; the declining enrolment of computing technology graduates at universities; and the unemployability among some of these graduates.
All data stated inside the document is based on actual salaries paid to ICT experts and not primarily based on surveys, the affiliation stated. The revenue evaluation within the report carried out buying strength parity (PPP) adjustments to the figures mentioned in a bid to recall inflation rates and fluctuations in forex rates, it brought.
According to the file, international locations in East Asia consisting of Vietnam and Hong Kong paid 2.19 and 2.12 times respectively better than in Malaysia (click chart to make bigger).
Other East Asian nations that crowned Malaysia protected China (1.93), Singapore (1.73), and Thailand (1.54), even as western nations paid as follows: United States (1.nine), Canada (1.forty four), Britain (1.40) Australia (1.52), New Zealand (1.sixty four).
These figures recommend that ICT specialists are in exceptional demand globally and within the area, and this example is expected to make contributions to the overall mind drain phenomenon experienced via the country, Pikom stated.
The facts this 12 months factors to similarly widening of salaries experienced through ICT professionals working abroad, confirming a trend that preceding reviews for 2012 and 2013 had highlighted.
Another key problem highlighted on this 12 months’s record became the sizeable drop in students enrolling in ICT publications seeing that 2002. Citing records acquired from the Ministry of Education, Pikom discovered that there had been over 119,000 students enrolled in ICT guides, with the manufacturing of fifty three,000 graduates in 2002.
However via 2012, both figures fell extensively to eighty,000 and 19,500 respectively. Some of the elements Pikom said contributed to this decline are:
- The belief that the ICT enterprise does now not provide a promising profession, specially the disillusionment springing up from the ‘dotcom bubble burst’ inside the 2000s;
- A lack of modern-day expertise about ICT traits, possibilities and profession possibilities among college instructors and counsellors, which similarly dampens scholar motivation to take up the path; and
- The lack of professional certification and recognition within the ICT industry not like what has been accorded to the clinical, engineering and architectural professions.
On the demand side, the file also highlighted the lack of quality, competency and employability among ICT graduates as a vital difficulty plaguing the industry. Only 10% of latest entrants to the personnel are at once employable, even as the final require re-training earlier than they could fully undertake the work, the document stated.
Hard to compete with
Speaking to the reporters at a media occasion saying the findings of its document closing week, Cheah stated the tendencies visible within the modern-day record are worrying but became brief to feature that Pikom and MDeC had all started taking steps some of years ago to try and cope with those problems holistically.
Conceding that those are complicated challenges, Cheah stated, “If this [trend] keeps, it is able to doubtlessly impact the national agenda beneath the 10th Malaysia Plan, which goals to reinforce the proportion of professional people up to 33% through 2015.”
Pikom research committee chairman Woon Tai Hai (%) mentioned that the brain drain phenomenon because of better salaries supplied through international locations globally and within the vicinity is a difficult difficulty to combat, as there's nothing preventing certified and professional specialists to take offshore jobs.
Also the on the spot beyond chairman of Pikom, Woon talked about that Vietnam will pay 2.19 instances better than Malaysia and does so in US dollars, which he cited was something very tough for Malaysian companies to offer.
However, Woon stated there seemed to be a silver lining for the industry as this 12 months’s take a look at had shown that the common revenue paid had multiplied via 7.2% from RM6,673 in 2012 to RM7,152 in 2013.
With the upward trend and an predicted stronger monetary increase forecasted this year, Woon said he expects the common salaries paid in the us of a to further climb 1.five percentage points to approximately eight.7% in 2014.
“The forthcoming implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on April 1, 2015 may even provide an impetus to the ICT industry as enterprises ‘rush’ to replace and/ or upgrade their systems to be GST-compliant, ensuing in a call for for software developers,” he claimed.
Next: Addressing these challenges and other study findings