Roxas backs entry of more IT schools

Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II supports the entry of new information technology schools in the country, especially as it dovetails with the government’s priority investment area of IT.

Roxas welcomed recently the entry of an international IT school in the country which will help educate more Filipino students. The National Institute of IT (NIIT) is set to put up an initial five branches in the country this month.

According to Jay Silayan, managing director of Mindstream Inc., the local licensee of NIIT in the Philippines, NIIT hopes to be able to educate more Filipino students about IT.

"In fact, NIIT prefers to target more high school students than college students," Silayan said, adding that "providing IT training early on will be more beneficial."

He said in the US alone, "more than half of the vacancies in the IT sector will go unfilled."

Silayan said that according to a study commissioned by the ITAA, the US IT industry will have a demand of roughly 1.6 million IT workers for this year alone.

Big US companies that are willing to give H1B visas for qualified IT workers, Silayan said, include Motorola, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Intel Corp., Microsoft and several IT companies.

He said the country continues to trail India in terms of tapping the US IT job market. India corners about 44 percent of the available H1B visas, while the Philippines accounts for only three percent.