This post is a summary of three articles: the first one, with the title above, published at http://www.economist.com/, on September 9th,2010. The second, with the title of, "Brazil`s ICT market: facing skill shortage, companies invest in training." Published at http://www.rcrwireless.com/americas/2013, on January 30, 2013. The third, " Brazil bids to become world`s third IT market by 2022." Published at http://news.yahoo.com/, on August 31, 2012.
Expanding the middle class requires better schools and reform in public spending. It has led some commentators to claim that Latin America is well on the way to building middle-class societies. That would have profound implications, for everything from politics to business. Poverty has declined almost everywhere. Just as important, income distribution has been getting less unequal in many countries. The decline of poverty is a result of a faster economic growth and the conquest of inflation, but also of better social policies. In particular, conditional cash-transfer ( CCT ) programmes, have proved effective in helping the poor. All this has mean that across the region the lower middle-class, also called, class C, has expanded. In Brazil, Fundação Getulio Vargas, a research institute, defines this group as having household income of between 1,070 reais and 4,560. The new lower middle-class is more entrepreneurial, though many of its member work at least partly in the informal economy. All this progress is still fragile, and not everyone finds a way out of poverty. The children of poor households are much less likely than the average to complete their schooling. If it is to become a middle-class society, Latin America`s first priority must be to improve the quality of schooling. Primary schooling is almost universal, 70% of the children in the region now start secondary school, but 90% do in rich countries. The number in tertiary education has risen to a third since 1999. But many drop out, and many who stay do not learn much. At least people are becoming more aware of the need to improve the quality of public education. This is particularly clear in Brazil, where the progressive education policies of the government of FHC ( 1995-2003 ) have been broadly continued under Lula. The government has introduced a national exam to monitor standards. In Sao Paulo state has also introduced a standard curriculum, required teachers to submit to a proficiency test and linked big salary increases for them to better schools results in the exams. Colombia and Chile have both made big efforts to expand pre-school education. In Peru, the government has introduced compulsory evaluation of teachers. But many parents are complacent about their children`s schooling, content that they are staying in school longer than they did themselves.
Several brazilian companies have chosen to invest in employee traning to deal with the lack of technically skilled job applicants. This strategy has also been used to reduce employee turnover, another serious concern for information and communication technologies companies ( ICT ). In the ICT labor market in Brazil, there are more open positions than candidates. In addition to the gap between the number of students graduating and the number of professionals the ICT market needs, the high cost of education is also an issue. " The qualification courses in the IT industry are very expensive," said Antonio Neto, president of the union representing IT workers in Sao Paulo state. "In traditional schools, these courses cost about US$15,000. Starting salaries, however, are low, and workers can not afford to pay. Many end up and changing areas," he add. Neto explained that the greatest shortage is for specialized professionals because the number of required skills, including graduating, specialization and high level of English. Tania Casa, director of human relations at PromonLogicalis said, " the greatest difficult is situated in the area of collaboration, such as, video conferencing, telepresence, network management, information security and data centers." Angelo Ribeiro, human resources manager at Arcon said, " the number of graduated does not meet the open positions, investing in training internally and getting professionals from other sites are altenative ways to reduce this difficulty."
Brazil hopes to become the world`s third largest information technology and communication market by 2022, behind China and U.S. Antonio Gil, president of the Brasscom ( Association of ICT companies ) said, "We are now focusing on innovation and new investment in small and medium sized companies as well as on using IT in sectors like health, education and transparency in government. Brazil today has 250 million mobile phones, but they are expensive due to the high taxes, equivalent to 45% of total bill. The major challenge is how to improve the country`s education system and overcome of shortage of skilled professionals." The Brazilian ICT industry currently has two million professionals and will need an additional 900,000 until 2022. The IT market in Brazil now represent around 4.5% of Brazil GDP, a share expected to jump to 6.6% in 2022.
