Bangladesh: Skills for Employment Investment Program - Tranche 3

Education / Technical and vocational education and training

Bangladesh's economy has achieved robust growth of more than 6% annually since 2010, driven largely by the booming garment sector and increasing remittance inflows. However, to place the country into a sustained growth path with diversified economic bases, inadequate education and skills of its workforce pose a binding constraint. More than half of the labor force have only primary education or less; and less than 4% of the working-age population (aged 15-59) had received any technical or vocational training. The working-age population is expanding fast, from 87 million in 2011 to 119 million by 2026, with 2 million potential new entrants to the labor force every year. In the early 2010s, technical and vocational training institutes trained fewer than 500,000 people annually; and poor quality of training resulted in only 25%-40% of graduates finding jobs. Recognizing the challenge, the government has embarked on major educational and training reforms since 2010 to build a strong workforce that will ensure the demographic dividend for a dynamic economy. Significant investments by the government and development partners have underpinned sharp increases in primary and secondary school enrollments. For technical and vocational skills training, the National Skills Development Policy (NSDP) in 2011 has steered major institutional and policy reforms to create a highly skilled workforce across diverse industrial sectors.

Anchored in the NSDP, the SEIP has adopted the MFF modality to assist the government's strategic road map that intends to transform its skills development system both quantitatively and qualitatively. The roadmap envisages to equip the growing young population with industry relevant, job-ready skills to enhance their employability, productivity, and income. The MFF supports the government's ambitious skilling agenda in phases for the following areas. First, it expands the national training capacity by mobilizing the private sector (i.e., industry associations) and revitalizing public training institutes to scale up the provision of job-ready skills training. The expanded provision will assure that women and socially disadvantaged groups can access the training. Second, the MFF aligns quality and contents of training with specific industrial demands by fostering direct involvement from industries. Quality assurance is enhanced through improved training infrastructure, trainers' qualifications, and assessment and certification procedures. Finally, the MFF supports key institutional reforms: the establishment of the National Skills Development Authority (NSDA) to coordinate fragmented training systems in the public and private sectors; and the creation of the National Human Resource Development Fund (NHRDF) to serve as a unified financing mechanism to sustain nationwide skilling initiatives.

Market-responsive inclusive skills training delivered

Quality assurance system strengthened

Institutions strengthened

Monitoring and management for skills development enhanced

Output 1: Preliminary activities are ongoing although no training under Tranche 3 has started yet due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Contracts have already been signed with some industry associations. Other contracts are under preparation and review. Training activities have been officially suspended since 18 March 2020.

Output 2: Activities will start immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic eases up.

Output 3: Recruitment rules and organogram of NHRDF have been approved. Recruitment of staff will start immediately after the pandemic eases up. Operational manual and financing plan have not yet been approved by Finance Division (no meeting has been done since the second meeting on January 02, 2020 because of pandemic).

NSDA rules have been approved and posted in the website. Organogram of NSDA has been cleared by Finance Division. Recruitment will start soon after completing a few more internal procedures.

Civil works packages are for contract award by Nov/Dec 2020.

Output 4: Activities are ongoing. Will be completed in due course.

Goods and civil works will be procured in accordance with ADB's Procurement Guidelines (2015, as amended from time to time). Goods valued at $2 million or more and works valued at $15 million or more will be procured through international competitive bidding method using ADB's standard bidding documents and will be subject to prior review by ADB. Goods and civil works packages with estimated value below the international competitive bidding threshold mentioned above will be procured using the national competitive bidding method, in accordance with the government's Public Procurement Act (2006, and subsequent amendments) and Public Procurement Rules (2008, and subsequent amendments) subject to modifications agreed between the government and ADB as set out in the FAM and procurement plan. For efficiency and economy, small civil works can be grouped together into larger bid packages, wherever feasible.

The existing implementing partners from Tranches 1 and 2 - 13 industry associations, BB-SME, and PKSF will be continuously be engaged through SSS to deliver the ongoing training courses, along with new courses. The same training grants contracts developed in Tranche 1 will be used with the updated business plan template for consistency across the implementing partners. The draft training grants contracts along with the business plan will be submitted to ADB for review and endorsement.