Background

1. The economy of Bangladesh is growing steadily benefiting from reforms and increasing openness. Annual GDP growth has accelerated from 4.1% in the period FY1973-1978 to 6.2% in FY2008-2013. Excitingly, since FY 2015-16 Bangladesh has been experiencing more than 7.0% GDP growth which crossed 8.0% in 2018-19 that gives the country an aspiration to claim up to double digits. Literacy rate has increased over past decades, so has school enrollment, and particularly girls and women’s participation in education. Population and labor force is predominantly young with more than a third in the 15-34 age group in 2010. Bangladesh is well-placed to benefit from the demographic dividend up to 2050 and perhaps beyond due to decline in fertility rates which, combined with effective policies and markets, triggers faster rates of economic growth and human development.
   
   
2. This may be reinforced by the growth of labor productivity through skills development and technological progress especially Information and Communication Technology (ICT) driven move towards a knowledge economy. However, skill is recognized after infrastructure and energy as the prime factor to industrial growth, productivity, export diversification and producing high value products. It needs to be mentioned here that the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Bangladesh Country Partnership Strategy (for 2012–2016) identifies the low competitiveness of firms as a key constraint to growth particularly the low skills and low productivity of the workforce.
   
   
3. Foreign remittances play a very vital role in Bangladesh economy. Bangladeshi expatriates are the main source of this remittance. But most of the Bangladeshis working abroad are unskilled or semiskilled are sending very low remittance when compared to South East Asian Countries. For steady and higher remittance inflows, enhancement of skills of the aspirant migrant workers has no alternative.
   
   
4. To coordinate the existing skills development and training programs sporadically being implemented by about 23 ministries and divisions, the Government has formulated National Skills Development Policy, 2011. To run the skills development programs in a holistic, coordinated and standardized way the Government has recently established National Skills Development Authority (NSDA) which will bring all skills development activities under one umbrella to ensure uniform quality and standard across the country. Side by side with the government’s fiscal support to the skills development programs additional source of funding will be ensured through National Human Resource Development Fund (NHRDF) which has already been established. Deserving public and private training institutes will benefit from this fund to carry on their training activities.
   
   

Skills for Employment Investment Program (SEIP)

5. Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed a Multi-tranche Financing Facility (MFF) Agreement with Bangladesh Government in 2014 in order to support long-term and comprehensive skills development efforts in Bangladesh assessing its potential contribution to higher GDP growth by skilling and up-skilling a large number of working age people in priority sectors. Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is also co-financing the program in the 1^st
   
   
6. Finance Division is the executing agency of the SEIP project while three Ministries (Ministry of Expatriate Welfare, Education and Industries), Bangladesh Bank, PKSF and 13 Industry Associations are partnering with this Division. Apart from this, BRTC under the Ministry of Ministry Road Transport & Highways is working with this project to develop 1,00,000 trained and licensed drivers to drastically reduce road accidents. Support to Skills Development Coordination and Monitoring Unit (SDCMU) is working as the implementing agency.
   
   
7. The Skills Development Coordination and Monitoring Unit (SDCMU) is headed by the Executive Project Director who is assisted by 04 Deputy Executive Project Directors, 10 Assistant Executive Project Directors and a team of Specialists. A Project Management Unit (PMU) is also working at Finance Division headed by Finance Secretary. Policy issues are dealt by the PMU alongside overall supervision of the project.
   
   
8. ADB and SDC have been jointly financing the first tranche of the program and the industry associations are also sharing a percentage of the total cost. SDC is , however, not financing the second and third tranche activities due to their internal policy changes. The total cost of SEIP project for the entire period all three tranches (2014 to 2024) is estimated at BDT 3712.33 crore which is broken down in the following table:

Financing Plan and Total Cost

Mode of Financing with Source                                                                                         (Taka in Lac)

Exchange Rate with date: $ 1 = BDT 84 as of 30.05.2019 (Source: Bangladesh Bank)

9. Tranche 1 will be implemented from July 2014 to December 2019 while Tranche 2 from March 2017 to December 2021 and Tranche 3 is planned to be implemented from January 2020 to June 2024. Expected impact of the project is increased employment in priority sectors through creation of improved skills. The project has four major components/ outputs: (i) market responsive inclusive skills training delivered; (ii) quality assurance system strengthened; (iii) institutions strengthened and (iv) effective program management and governance system ensured.
   
   
10. Output 01: The prime objective of the SEIP project is to impart market responsive, job focused and inclusive training for the male and female aged 15 and over. SEIP has a target of providing training to more than 0.8 million people by 2024 on more than 130 occupations out of which 60% will be provided with gainful employment. In giving the training private industry associations will play the major role. The public training institutes under BMET, DTE, BITAC and BRTC have been fully engaged in delivering SEIP training. In addition to this, PKSF and BB-SME are also working as SEIP partners in delivering skills training mainly to develop entrepreneurs. Inclusiveness is one of the most important considerations of SEIP trainee selection criteria. SEIP has a set target of including at least 30% women in total trainees. It has also engaged a social marketing firm to carry out various campaigns to encourage socially disadvantaged, physically challenged and ethnic community people to take part in SEIP training. The project has set a target of distributing special stipend to 1,00,000 poor, ethnic minority and disadvantaged people. SEIP is addressing a wide range of training programs starting from the basic level training courses to the high level managerial development program to meet the requirements of the industries. Private, public and NGO sector training institutes are involved in providing skills training in partnership with the Industry Associations, PKSF and BB-SME.
    
    
11. Output 02: SEIP project believes that if the skills trainings are of appropriate quality, the trained graduates will manage to get a gainful wage/self employment in the job market. With this end in view, SEIP is supporting the training providers with good quality trainers, equipment and furniture, training of the trainers arranged at home and abroad. Training is also given to the managers and assessors so that overall improvement in training quality can be ensured. In order to support quality training, Competency Standards, CBLMs, Assessment Tools are being developed by SEIP by the fast track consultants and British Council in close consultation with the industry experts so that they can cater to the needs of the industry. Trained assessors are used to independently assess trainee’s performance to ensure training quality.
    
    
12. Output 03: One of the four major components of SEIP is to develop and strengthen skills development institutions which will make permanent contribution to the growth process of the country.  Firstly, SEIP has helped establish National Human Resource Development Fund (NHRDF) under Finance Division as envisaged in the National Skill Development Policy (NSDP) 2011 to ensure continuous flow of additional funding to the deserving private and public training institutes so that they will not tumble to carry out their training activities. SEIP has also helped establish National Skills Development Authority (NSDA) which will coordinate and improve skills development programs sporadically implemented by 23 ministries/divisions. This authority will address the entire skills eco-system administratively separated from the technical education, but technically integrated with it. It is a regulatory body that will approve CSs and recognize high quality training institutes (RTOs). It will also develop a standardized assessment and certification framework. ISC is another institution SEIP project has supported to make it fully operational. This will work as a link between NSDA and industries to cater to the changing needs of the industries triggered by global innovation and competition. SEIP has already established 03 Executive Development Centers (EDCs) at three reputed Universities namely Bangladesh University Of Textiles (BUTEX), East-west University (EWU) and BRAC University (BRAC-U) to develop high class managers for the industries which we presently import from foreign countries for whom we have to spend more than 6.oo billion USD. SEIP will develop another EDC at IBA, Dhaka University which is currently under process. These EDCs are a unique case of Industry – Academia Collaboration in Bangladesh. Through the EDCs, mid and high level managers will be developed for textile, knitwear, garment and leather & footwear sectors.
    
    
13. Output 04: As SEIP is a huge project, proper management of the project and ensuring good governance is a big challenge. With this end in view, SEIP has established a real time online Training Management System (TMS) to capture all important information/data relating to Training activities. It captures trainee information, trainers’ information, enrollment, assessment, certification, job placement information etc. in a sex disaggregated way. It has got many more modules covering almost the whole sphere of training management. It also tracks the trained and job placed graduates for 06 months. Monthly, quarterly and annual reports are generated based on TMS data. Payments of the bills are also processed using TMS information.
    
    
14. SEIP has been currently supporting 10 priority sectors. Few more sectors will come up when the implementation of the Tranche 3 starts. Under these priority sectors SEIP is partnering with 13 industry associations and also with the public training institutes alongside some semi-government and autonomous bodies like PKSF, BB-SME etc. The priority sectors SEIP is presently working for  are as follows:

1. 1. Readymade Garment and Textile
   2. Construction
   3. Information Technology
   4. Light Engineering
   5. Leather and Footwear
   6. Ship Building
   7. Tourism and Hospitality Management
   8. Agro Processing
   9. Transport (Motor Driving)
   10. Nursing & Care-giving

Under Tranche 3, Renewable Energy is also coming as another sub-sector the SEIP project will be working with.

15. A training provider wise break down of trainee target is shown in the following table:
    
    

Allocation of Trainee Target (T1 to T3)