Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese most competitive in Asia

Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese most competitive in Asia

SINGAPORE (AFP): The Philippines, India and Vietnam are seen
by business executives as having the most competitive labor pools
in Asia, where many countries are facing manpower problems,
according to a regional survey.

The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC) said a
poll of 400 executives showed more affluent countries like South
Korea and Singapore, both marked by labor shortages and high
wages, were ranked lowest.

"Asia has a labor problem -- a big one. Labor issues --
finding, training and retaining workers -- are the single biggest
challenge facing most company managers," said the PERC's
fortnightly Asian Intelligence report.

The Philippines had "the best balanced labor situation" among
12 countries covered by the survey, dislodging India, which
scored highest in a 1996 poll.

"Senior managers continue to regard Philippine labor as cheap
and of high quality, at least partly because of their good
command of English. Turnover rates are also low," the PERC report
said.

But it warned that perhaps because of the plentiful supply of
both trained and untrained labor, companies in the Philippines
have lagged in adopting new technology, and as a result,
productivity tends to be "extremely poor."

India slipped in the rankings, despite having an abundance of
workers with quality technical skills, because illiteracy is more
prevalent particularly among women, and the problem of child
labor is more extensive, PERC said.

"Compounding the problem is the caste-stratified culture to
which company managers have to be sensitive," it remarked.

In Vietnam, foreign businessmen may be "extremely put off" by
corruption and bureaucracy but the labor force "is clearly an
attribute the country can use as a big drawing card," the report
said.

Vietnam has been more successful at providing basic education
than countries like China or India, which have deeper labor
pools, and Vietnamese "are also eager to work," with some of the
lowest wage levels in the region.

PERC said Vietnamese are also noted for linguistic skills,
with workers fluent in such languages as English or French and
several dialects of Chinese.

In fourth-ranked China, the country is so big that the
situation in one part is very different from the other, and
foreign investment is now gravitating toward areas with more
universities such as Shanghai and Tianjin.

Productivity is in general a "tremendous problem" in China,
and "personal connections rather than technology are considered
to be the asset needed to get things done," the report noted.

Indonesian labor, ranked fifth, is still considered relatively
cheap but "quality leaves much to be desired," the report said.

In eighth-ranked Thailand, currently wrenched by severe
economic problems and a sharply devalued currency, the labor
situation is "very worrying" after the government neglected the
educational system, resulting in a shortage of skilled
technicians.

Production costs have risen and unskilled Thai labor is
costlier than in other developing countries. Moreover, companies
cannot bring in sophisticated equipment because they cannot find
workers to run or maintain it, PERC said.

Malaysia, ninth in the rankings, is one of the most difficult
countries in the region to recruit skilled and unskilled labor
and turnover rates are very high, but the push toward new
technology could compensate for the constraints, PERC said.
Taiwan and Hong Kong came in at the middle of the rankings.

Hong Kong's brain drain problem has been exaggerated and more
labor has in fact moved into the territory than has left it, PERC
said.

Middle- and upper-management is expensive but of high quality
and quite mobile, enhancing Hong Kong's status as a regional
corporate center and a base for supporting China business, it
said.