Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen assumed duties as the Minister of Skills Development and Vocational Training at the Ministry in Narahenpita earlier today. His portfolio now reads Minister of Industry and Commerce, Resettlement of Protracted and Displaced Persons, Cooperative Development, Skills Development and Vocational Training. Accordingly, the National Institute of Technical Education, Ocean University of Sri Lanka (National Institute of Fisheries and Nautical  Engineering), Ceylon German Technical Training Institute, National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority, National Institute of Business Management, Skills Development Fund Ltd,  Sri Lanka Institute of Printing, Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka, Department of Technical Education and Training, and the University of Vocational Technology have been brought under Bathiudeen under the Extraordinary Gazette 2115/10 of 18 March. This gazette also brought the Department of Commerce under him. Even though national skills development and vocational training activities are only now being assigned to his Ministry, such capacity boosting efforts are familiar to him and his Ministry, said Bathiudeen. “I believe my Ministry can successfully make use of the Vocational and Skills Development institutions assigned to us,” he said assuming duties. The Ministry said that it trained more than 21,000 Sri Lankans across many sectors-domestic industries (rubber, ceramics, polymer etc), handicrafts, new entrepreneurs, small industrialists and even cooperative development in 2018. These included countless training programs and large number of trainess –but there were several top-line projects; 68 personnel in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for Rubber Technology, 148 under private & public sector Rubber Cluster Young Network (RCYN) under the Rubber Master Plan, 6964 industrialist training under Industrial Development Board’s 232 training programs, Sri Lanka Institute of Textile and Apparel (SLITA) conducted 137 sought-after apparel programs, 206 trainees were in Small & Medium Enterprises Skills Development Training Program of SLITA to enhance the technical and managerial skills of the small & medium apparel sector, 263 industry personnel in the Productivity Improvement Programme (PIP) of SLITA, 263 trained in programs for Technical Staff of 09 factories increasing efficiency of these factories from 10% to 15%, training for training Programmes for 12,100 new and existing entrepreneurs by National Enterprise Development Authority (NEDA-South Asia’s first UNESCO-APEID entrepreneur education meet in Sri Lanka was also held by in October 2018 resulting in Trincomalee Declaration on Entrepreneur Education), 100 youth were trained by NEDA’s Entrepreneurship Development Programme (with Universities, 110 were trained on new designs by National Design Centre (NDC),  906 Craftsmen trained under Providing Knowledge on New Design & New Technology project also by NDC, 798 full-time apprentice craftsmen and 72 master craftsmen were trained by National Crafts Council (NCC), and another 875 apprentices across 112 craft training centers functioning in 17 craft sectors in 19 Districts were also trained by NCC, bringing the total personnel trained under Industry and Commerce Ministry last year above 12000.