The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement to finance $70 million for a vocational training project in Vietnam, state media reported. The project costs a total of $78 million with $8-million coming from the government of Vietnam’s reciprocal capital, Nguyen Van Giau, governor of the State Bank of Vietnam said at the signing ceremony. The project will focus on setting up a network of vocational colleges in an effort to ease the skilled manpower shortage, Giau attributed. ADB will support 15 non-state vocational schools so as to give them a fair competition with the state-run ones in the training sector. Vietnam now has over 90 vocational colleges and 250 career schools but trained manpower shortage is still regarded as a big hindrance to the national economic development, he added. (Vietnamplus Oct 5, Thoi bao Kinh te – Economic Times Oct 6 p1)
