SINGAPORE, Jan 31 (AFP) - An information technology (IT) revolution sweeping across Asia is causing an acute shortage of skilled labor that may limit the region's rebound from an economic crisis, analysts say.
The region was already reeling from a skilled labor shortage before it was hit by the financial crisis in mid-1997. However, nations did little to stem the problem because economies were booming then.
As the so-called New Economy takes hold in Asia, many firms need to restructure and reconfigure to survive in this new technology wave of digital networks, software and new media, said Wong Yit Fan, Standard Chartered Bank's chief economist with Southeast Asia. "With technology driving the economy, amplified by the e-commerce craze and knowledge-based activities, the missing piece of the puzzle is skilled human resources," he said.
Wong forecast a long gestation period to gear up the local workforce through training and education because of constraints like government budget deficits and lack of expatriates, who had quit during the crisis. He said it would be less easy for foreign talent to return now as the financial turmoil, which plunged most of the region into recession, had fanned nationalistic sentiments.
Barry Vienet, managing director of Morgan and Banks Human Resources Pte. Ltd., a top executive placement agency, said employers in Asia were chasing after a shrinking pool of IT experts. The shortage has caused salaries of specialized IT personnel to balloon, with some companies offering share option schemes to attract and retain them, he said.
The breathtaking growth in information technology and communications industries has boosted demand for talent, not only in media and advertising companies but also in banking and finance. According to the last job index survey of Morgan and Banks covering the October-December quarter, 70 percent of companies in Asia planned to hire - with the recruitment figure far higher at 90 percent for IT and e-commerce companies.
Vienet said that as training was a long-term solution, recruiting foreign talent would cushion the enormous demand for labor to drive the "knowledge" economy as Asian businesses reinvent themselves to become more competitive. "Asia cannot afford to be parochialistic," he said.
The Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) last year published an Asian ranking for quality of skilled labor, with Japan emerging on top followed by Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. "The defining feature of a country's competitive advantage in the future will be the quality of its skilled workers," PERC said.
A recent ranking by Standard Chartered Bank of Southeast Asian economies based only on the management and availability of skilled human resources puts Singapore far ahead of the pack. The Philippines, perhaps the only country that possesses an adequate supply of local talent, comes after Singapore, followed by Malaysia and Thailand, the bank said.
Rodolfo Severino, secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said the sweep of the Information Age through the region required a "crash" program to raise the level of skills of the population as a whole. "This is necessary because the creation of a knowledge society depends on achieving a critical mass of people plugged into such a society," he said. Severino said the broad upgrading of skills would need massive investments from the public and private sector in education at all levels, especially for the poor. In many cases, this meant the overhaul of the education sector altogether.
Chief Economist Wong of Standard Chartered said countries more likely to succeed in the New Economy would be those willing and able to compete fiercely for the very limited pool of talent from within the region and further ashore. "Hence, immigration policies and personal income tax rates will be as important as monetary and fiscal policies in determining which economies perform relatively better," he said 
