We welcome the high profile support being given by Switzerland to the Skills for Employment Investment Program supported by the government and Asian Development Bank.
Switzerland has this week granted the programme $10 million to help scale up skills training for young workers in Bangladesh.
The $1bn initiative being implemented by the Ministry of Finance aims to equip over 1.25 million young people with employable skills by 2021. It is focused on supporting skills training in 15 priority sectors, starting with garments and textiles, leather, construction, light engineering, information technology and shipbuilding.
An important feature of this program is that it is built on pooling funds and resources from both the government and private sector as well as from different development partners. The involvement of different stakeholders and their focus on performance based targets to boost job placements for beneficiaries of the scheme, bodes well for its future.
The country needs our growing workforce become skilled and more productive in as many different sectors as possible. Improving training and developing young workers is vital to help the economy become more internationally competitive and take full advantage of the potential of our demographic dividend
Innovation and competitiveness are key areas where Bangladesh has huge room for making improvements which will allow the economy to become more internationally competitive and productive. We cannot afford to stay still.
As the economy grows, we have to continually invest in skills development to help exporters rise up the value chain in order to stay competitive.