school level education) corresponds roughly to a 4% increase in the GNP per capita, as shown by the macrotic results of the last twenty years. This suggests that the profit on educational investment is not insignificant. The percentage of financial investment in education is increasing in all countries throughout this region except the Philippines, with the highest being 23% in Korea, and even in the Philippines it was 10% after 1990. (See Table 9)
These standard education levels which we have seen do not always show remarkable economic effects in the short-term. Those circumstances caused a continuous demand on an insufficiently large skilled laborforce by companies/industries. All kinds of private vocational colleges and professional educational institutes were established in addition to expanding the government run vocational training centers to cope with the demand. Japan has also suggested support for establishing and expanding vocational training institutes, when President Suzuki visited ASEAN countries. In Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, the number of trainers in the government run vocational training institutes has more than doubled within the 1980's, and as 60% of all workers in the machine industry and over 20% in the electrical appliances industry are advanced technical workers, the trend of manufacturing technology as important has been strengthened.
In reality, human resource development and technological training in ASEAN countries cannot cope with all the needs due to the relationship of those small size companies. The scale of 90% of those companies within the ASEAN countries, except for Thailand, are mostly small with less than ten staff, so there is a limit to the amount the companies can invest in training. In these circumstances, it can be said that advanced foreign capital companies have contributed significantly with vocational training. Furthermore, hiring and retaining lower and mid-level auditing staff is a pressing need to enforce localization of human resources for advanced Japanese companies, and acceptance of trainees has increased significantly from 29,000 people in 1989 to 43,000 in 1993.
