Skills Development Fund

Cambodia’s economy has experienced remarkable growth over the past two decades, on average around 7.7% per annum. In order to sustain high and resilient growth, especially to achieve Cambodia Vision of becoming an upper middle-income country by 2030, Royal Government has been implementing Industrial Development Policy 2015-2025 to further improve Cambodia’s economic competitiveness and diversified sources of growth, and more importantly to transform the economy from a labor-intensive to a skill-based economy.

In this regard, the RGC has laid out a number of measures to improve the provision of skilled workforce through various policies, strategies, programs and projects implemented by government ministries and institutions, particularly by Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports as well as joint programs and projects implemented in partnership with development partners and non-government organizations.

To complement the efforts of other government relevant ministries and institutions to accelerate the building of highly skilled workforce to meet the demand of private sector, Ministry of Economy and Finance has initiated a training fund called Skills Development Fund (SDF). SDF is innovative partnership between public-private sectors in skill development, which is recognized as an effective approach to better equip workforce with the right skills and meet the demand of private sector. In fact, funds for training such as SDF have been commonly used by many governments around the globe to address skills needs by the private sector for the following three reasons: (1) private sector has a platform, where they could seek co-financing from the government to fund training projects to upgrade their workers, (2) government could minimize risks of labor supply mismatch to the need of the job market, and (3) training fund such as SDF would encourage training providers and industry to work closer in jointly developing and implementing the training programs, and allow trainers at school to expose to latest equipment, technologies, and practices at industry which would foster school-industry linkages.

Through SDF, the RGC is taking a serious and innovative approach to the development of Cambodia’s workforce. SDF project is indeed supported by reputable development partners, such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The SDF is co-financing both upskilling workers who are currently working and providing training to new workforce. The fund also targets training of trainers (ToT) who currently work in schools or companies so they could upgrade their expertise. SDF welcome proposals for training in both soft skills and technical skills initiated jointly by private sectors, schools and training providers and target key industries such as manufacturing, electronics, construction, ICT, tourism, etc.

We cordially invite you to look through sections of our webpage and get in touch with our team members through various channels. And, we look forward to receiving your training proposals and working with you to achieve successful outcomes for SDF.

Kind Regards,
H.E. Vanarith CHHEANG, Project Director

មូលនិធិអភិវឌ្ឍន៍ជំនាញ