Mumbai: Vietnam is facing a considerable shortage of manpower in a number of industries.

First among the list is the construction industry, which is seeing a crippling labour shortage, according to the ministry of construction, which reported that the industry's trained labour force meets only at quarter of the demand.

Adding to the quagmire is the fact that while construction was considered as an industry with one of the highest growth rate, with annualised rates forecast at 15 to 20 per cent over the coming years, it is also faced with ballooning construction costs. Vietnam's year-on-year inflation rate has hit 21.4 per cent last month, according to government figures, and construction costs in Vietnam have gone up by almost 40 per cent since the end of 2007, according to a report by Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte.

Industry sources now say that contractors have begun to defer construction work in order to avoid the risk of bankruptcy.

According to deputy construction minister Nguyen Van Lien, the labour force in the construction industry totalled approximately 2 million people, comprising skilled manpower trained at vocational centres of the construction ministry and construction enterprises. He said demand for construction labour was estimated to grow 10 per cent per annum, which meant that the construction ministry will have to hike its number of trained engineers and workers by 10-12 per cent each year. He also said that there was also a shortage of trained workers, and an abundance of engineers, with the industry's ratio of engineers to workers being 1:3, compared to international rates of 1:10.

A report in the Wednesday edition of the Vietnam Economic Times talked about Vietnam's financial and banking, healthcare and shipbuilding industries being in dire need of qualified employees. The report suggests that banks in Vietnam need 15,000 university graduates every year, but educational and training institutions are able to cater to only around 11,000.

Similar stories are told of the shipbuilding industry. The report estimates Vietnam's education and training capacity for the country's shipbuilding industry being able to meet only around 40 to 60 per cent of the demand of 10,000-15,000 new staff annually, between 2008 and 2015. It says that now, over 5,700 local students study shipbuilding at six universities and colleges.

Healthcare staffing is also a critical problem. According to Vietnam's health ministry, the target of having 1.5 druggists per 10,000 residents by 2010 seems almost unattainable, as currently Vietnam has only 0.2 druggists per 10,000 people. The country has over 241,500 health workers presently, and educational institutions annually turn out around 24,000 health workers, which includes 6,200 graduates from the country's universities, which barely caters to the replacement demand generated by around 12,000 retirees every year.