JICA to Help Vietnam Train Manpower for Plastic Sector

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will help train manpower for Vietnamese plastic sector in an effort to further boost its sustainable development in the future. The agency will cooperate with the Ho Chi Minh City Investment and Trade Promotion Center (ITPC) in the project from Oct 2011 to April 2014 to train plastic engineers and provide them practices at Japan-invested firms in Vietnam, said Nguyen Anh Ngoc, deputy director of ITPC.  JICA, ITPC and plastic firms are discussing criteria for staffs to be trained, Ngoc added. Vietnam’s plastic sector has an annual growth rate of 15%-20%. However, the profit is low due to the high rate of imported materials and low technologies.
Currently, up to 90% of more than 2,200 plastic firms work as processors for foreign producers.
The Southeast Asian country has only three firms producing plastic materials with about 250,000 tons of PVC and 150,000 tons of DOP per year, meeting only 10% of the total demand.
In 2010, Vietnam earned $1 billion worth of exporting 3.8 million tons of plastic products to more than 40 countries and territories including the U.S., EU, Africa, Middle East, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and China. (Tuoi Tre – Youth June 20 p17)