Philippines faces IT manpower shortage

CNAP is an educational-oriented, non-profit IT program that aims to nurture IT professionals and contribute to the implementation of IT education in the provinces.

CNAP manager Cristina de Jesus said that the IT courses currently offered at locals schools and universities need to be upgraded in order to meet global standards.

She added that many of these schools cannot cope with the IT requirements of big corporations and hence, the IT graduades whom are hired by these companies were made to undergo additional training abroad.

In addition, the skills fail to match the demand.

There are over 850,000 IT job vacancies in the United States alone, de Jesus said.

These companies like to hire Filipinos due to their flexible working attitude and language capabilities, she explained.

According to de Jesus, there are currently 65,000 Filipino IT specialists working in Silicon Valley alone.

De Jesus said that the Philippines should act quickly to improve the quality of its IT education, lest IT graduates from other countries such as India become more competitive than Philippine graduates.