THE Technical Education Skills Development Authority (Tesda) has set aside P2 billion this year for training potential information and communications technology and business process management (ICT/BPM) talents.
Maria Susan dela Rama, Tesda executive director for certification office, said the thrust is to prioritize support for industries that generate a lot of jobs, such as the ICT/BPM industry.
This year, the target is to train 204,125 individuals, including 45,281 for ICT/BPM.
Dela Rama said they started with the Technical Vocational Education Training program or the TVET program in 2006.
“We allocated P500 million to train 100,000 individuals back in 2006 under the Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP).
We identified seven priorities under ICT then during the 6th Philippines TVET Forum, which carried the theme ‘Human Capacity Building in ICT’,” she said.
The seven priorities include call center, engineering design, shared financial services, medical transcription, legal transcription, animation and software development.
Since 2006, Tesda has already spent a total of P3.05 billion for ICT/BPM. This makes up 19.1 percent of the total P15.97 billion that the agency has spent under TWSP for priority industries, which also include agri-fisheries, manufacturing, tourism, infrastructure and logistics.
“We have trained a total of 315,520 since 2006 with 307,724 graduates for ICT/BPM alone,” de la Rama said.
Last year, they trained a total of 163,400 with a budget of P1.4 billion. Of the total, 36,225 slots were allocated for ICT/BPM.
“This year, the budget is P2 billion and the target is 204,125, which include 33,250 for agri-fishery, 36,862 for manufacturing, 51,184 for tourism, 45,281 for ICT/BPM, 33,834 for infrastructure or construction and 3,714 for logistics,” she said.
Anticipating more demand from the ICT/BPM industry next year, dela Rama said they have increased the allocation for ICT/BPM to 49,810 slots and a higher total target of 224,538 with a budget of P2.2 billion.