By Natasha Brereton-Fukui
Singapore’s government is setting up a vocational training institute in Myanmar in an effort to prepare that country’s workforce for an expected surge in demand for local talent.
Natasha Brereton-Fukui/The Wall Street Journal
Singapores former prime minister Goh Chok Tong said Singapore is “very keen on helping Myanmar.”
Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s second prime minister from 1990 to 2004 and now a senior adviser to the city state’s central bank, said the government has found a location in Yangon, the country’s largest city, and will be training instructors in Singapore while the building is renovated.
Subjects on the menu will begin with hospitality, and then progress to areas like mechanical and electrical skills, and later more specialist subjects, such precision engineering.
“We are very keen on helping Myanmar. If this country takes off, it’s good for Asean,” Mr. Goh said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, referring to the 10-member group of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Myanmar and Singapore.
“It’s going to stabilize Asean and make Asean more prosperous, and a prosperous Asean is good for Singapore,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on East Asia, a gathering this week of hundreds of world business and political leaders in Myanmar.
The shortage of skilled workers in Myanmar partly reflects its decimation of Myanmar’s higher education system over the past few decades, after leaders of the military takeover became convinced that the country’s once-proud universities were breeding grounds for dissent.
The initiative builds on a package of measures focusing on the training of government officials, which Singapore announced last year, and aims to support Myanmar as it attempts to rapidly open up its economy and transform the prospects of its 60 million people.
Mr. Goh said Myanmar’s government was now keen to get help to develop the financial sector, including in the area of regulation, which could entice more foreign banks to venture into this new market.
He said the Singapore government was also interested in helping to upgrade Myanmar’s laws, with those covering areas such as taxation and dispute resolution being particularly important from an investor’s perspective. Infrastructure, hospitality and urbanization are areas in which Singapore companies would be particularly suited to play a role in the country, he said.
“We’re generally optimistic that [the Myanmar government is] on the right track. The leaders are working together. That’s my sense,” he said.
Singapore Pitches In to Help Myanmar Build Skilled Workforce
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