THE province of Saskatchewan in Canada will need 10,000 to 12,000 Filipino skilled workers to fill in the increasing demands of its labor market in the next five years, says its top official visiting the Philippines.

Rob Norris, minister for labor and immigration of Canada’s Saskatchewan province, said with the increase of business infrastructure in the province, the labor market has a high demand for skilled workers to fill sectors in the services, manufacturing and construction, retail sales and restaurants.

Norris is in the country to meet with officials of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and key government officials to discuss how they could both effectively implement the memorandum of understanding, signed a few years ago, that seeks to facilitate the hiring of skilled Filipino workers for Saskatchewan.

“The labor market needs to relate to the growth that’s under way in Saskatchewan and we anticipate that over the next five years, we are going to need 10,000 to 12,000 people coming into the labor market,” said Norris.  “And with some large projects we anticipate coming our way, that [need] will increase.”

Norris spoke at the meeting of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines held Tuesday at the Makati Shangri-La hotel to discuss the prospects of encouraging more Filipino skilled workers to go to Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan is known as the prairie province of Canada, situated between provinces of Alberta and Manitoba with only 1 million population. Norris said 6 percent, or 600,000 of the population, are immigrants that include 1,000 to 2,000 Filipinos.

The Canadian official also said the province of Saskatchewan also encourages immigration of Filipino families and not just hiring of skilled workers.

He said smaller provinces like Saskatchewan offers better compensation, or 15-percent higher salary rate, and high quality of living than in the larger Canadian immigration centers of Montreal, Vancouver and Ontario. He said Ontario is facing a serious economic disruption as “people are getting laid off from its manufacturing industries.”

“We are committed to having a dynamic, diverse and cosmopolitan community and not just simply about [filling up the] labor market needs,” said Norris. “Saskatchewan needs to catch up in attracting people from other Canadian provinces and around the world.”

THE unabated increase in oil and food prices has forced the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) to revise its growth targets for the next two years downward, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

THE Export Development Council (EDC) is now targeting to submit to Malacañang for approval the new three-year Philippine Export Development Plan (PEDP) by the middle of the year with six new key challenges being taken into consideration.

THE national government and the Japanese government are now in the process of creating a medium-term framework that will serve as a blueprint for Japan’s assistance to the Philippines in the next five years, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

THE province of Saskatchewan in Canada will need 10,000 to 12,000 Filipino skilled workers to fill in the increasing demands of its labor market in the next five years, says its top official visiting the Philippines.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) has lifted the temporary ban on all imports of domestic and wild birds, along with poultry and its products from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, following official confirmation showing that the avian influenza (AI) virus in the prairie area no longer exists in the last three months.

THE Philippine government expects to save up to $500 million annually from rice imports with the rice self-sufficiency master plan it has rolled out.

PLANT coffee and earn! National Coffee Development Board (NCDB) co-chairperson Pacita Juan advises farmers to go back to planting coffee, the price of which has shot up by nearly 400 percent.

IT”S school time again! Some may be a little sad that the end of summer is fast approaching, while others just can’t wait to go back to school and look forward to new things: social scenes, teachers, classmates and friends.