THE Foreign Minister, U Win Aung, has stressed the role of education and training to provide the human resources needed to ensure that Myanmar becomes a modern, developed nation.

U Win Aung said this could not be achieved only with material and natural resources.
“The richness of our natural resources does not mean that our country is rich, but that it has the potential to be rich,” he said.

“Only when we possess well developed human resources can we exploit the [natural] resources to get rich.”

The minister said that the main reason why Myanmar was still a developing country, despite its rich natural resources, was a shortage of skilled, highly-trained human resources.

U Win Aung was speaking on May 5 at a graduation ceremony for the 10th basic diplomacy skills course offered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He said that Japan and Germany had suffered terribly as a result of World War Two but one of the main reasons why both countries had recovered in a short time was their strong human resources.

The minister cited India as an example of a country which has made great economic progress because of skilled human resources, particularly in the information and communications technology sector.

He said many Indian computer specialists had acquired their skills through working at Silicon Valley in California, the centre of the ICT industry in the United States.

They had returned to their homeland and used their knowledge to help India emerge as a world leader in ICT.

Many international companies had taken advantage of the competence and labour cost advantages of India’s ICT sector to use it as a base for outsourcing operations.

“So the ICT sector in India is growing very fast,” U Win Aung said.

He said Myanmar’s younger generation should be encouraged to become highly educated so that they can generate good ideas which contribute to economic development.

“We must develop our skills and broaden our thinking to achieve a bright future; we still need to learn even the art of retailing practiced in advanced countries,” U Win Aung said.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was contributing to human resources development by offering the three-month basic diplomacy skills courses, which provide training in negotiation and diplomacy skills and international etiquette.
The latest course attracted an enrollment of 162.