Ministry of planni

Singapore’s overall unemployment rate continues to fall in January. (Photo: businesstimes.com.sg) Singapore (VNA) - Singapore’s overall unemployment rate continued to fall in January thanks to economic stabilisation, according to latest figures released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on March 3. The overall unemployment rate edged down to 3.2 percent, from 3.3 percent in December, while the resident unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, down 0.1 percent. The citizen unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.5 percent, having earlier decreased from 4.7 percent in November. There were 101,900 unemployed residents in January, of which 89,300 were citizens. Minister of Manpower Josephine Teo pointed to initiatives like the Jobs Support Scheme and the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package that helped Singaporeans stay employed, together with tripartite efforts coordinated by the National Jobs Council. Since September 2020, the Jobs Growth Incentive has also helped to expand local hiring, she added. However, Teo said more work needs to be done since long-term unemployment rate is still elevated in the nation, and even for those employed, some are in short-term or transitional positions./. VNA …

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Crafted by the Ministry of Finance, the draft circular guides the implementation of the 2019 Law on Tax Administration and Decree No 126/2020/ND-CP dated October 19, 2020 of the Government providing further guidance on its execution. Overseas suppliers who have no permanent establishment but conduct e-commerce or digital-based business activities and derive income from individuals and organisations in Vietnam shall still be treated as permanent entities in the country. They shall be obliged to make online tax registrations and declarations on the General Department of Taxation’s official portal, and be allowed to open more than one bank account for making tax payments but have one email only to receive tax notifications. The draft circular also stipulates the obligation of banks and payment intermediary service companies to define transaction accounts of foreign suppliers who have no permanent establishment in Vietnam to withhold taxes. Source: VNA …

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According to the comprehensive plan to develop the IT human resources, Vietnam needed 1 million workers in the IT field in 2020. Yet the reality shows that there are only 600,000 IT students being trained in 400 higher educational institutes and 8 key IT training centers nationwide. Statistics from the Institute of Information Technology Strategy (under the Ministry of Information & Communications) show that 72 percent of IT students lack practical experience, while 42 percent are weak at team work. Only 15 percent of IT graduates satisfy the demands of employers. Vietnam now has over 700 IT companies working in key fields of the IT industry, including 220 foreign ones. They mostly locate in major cities or software parks. Notably, despite a high job potential, the AI field still attracts little attention from both learners and trainers. There is no formal university department or school to specifically provide tertiary education in this field. Most curriculum focus on software developing, which is a rather old trend of the previous decade. This calls for a serious curriculum redesign to answer the current needs of IT companies, both domestic and international. There should be an establishment of AI departments in universities or the development of such majors as computer vision, natural language processing, Big Data, robotics. Tertiary educational institutes should cooperate with IT businesses for internship programs, career guiding fairs, academic challenges, and training equipment provision (like server clusters, computing clusters, GPU, robots, IoT devices). Experts voiced that in order for HCMC to own sufficient core AI human resources, the municipal authorities must first identify the market needs and the ability to apply research result in reality. They then have to actively link the development of smart city, innovative urban areas with the growth of talented AI employees. These actions will gradually form a complete AI ecosystem so that HCMC …

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