J.P. Morgan extends $10 m to World Bank to hone skills of India’s youth

21 / 10 / 2019

By Marwa Nassar - -

J.P. Morgan today announced an up to $10 million commitment to a new World Bank Multi Donor Trust Fund focused on improving the quality of skills development for young people in India.

The program – School to Work: Skilling India’s Youth – will improve access to quality and market-relevant training for youth in select states of India.

The program will support innovative models in curriculum development; provide appropriate training for teachers as well as career counseling for students; develop and match skills development programs to emerging demand in the future of work; foster inclusion of marginalized communities; and reduce gender gaps in accessing skills development programs. Pilot projects will be launched in Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

“Children who are in primary school today are likely to work in jobs that do not even exist right now. To prepare for a fundamentally altered world of work, investing in people and their skills, is going to be a critical policy decision countries can make to secure the future of their citizens,” said Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director in India.

“This collaboration with J.P. Morgan, focused on improving the quality of skills development for young people, will support India’s efforts to tap into the future job market as it strives to transition to a high middle-income country,” he added.

The investment in the World Bank program is part of J.P. Morgan’s $25 million, five-year commitment to help low- and middle-income communities in India develop the skills needed by the country’s workforce in the future. The firm will apply lessons learned from its initiatives in the U.S. that help connect young and long-term unemployed adults with rewarding career pathways and will also use insights from India to maximize the impact of future investments across the world.

“India is in a unique position as, for the next two decades, more than two-thirds of its population will be of working age,” said Kalpana Morparia, Chairman, South and South East Asia, J.P. Morgan. “We believe integrating work skill training with core academic curriculum will create an efficient workforce for the country’s economic progress.”

J.P. Morgan is the first private sector organization to partner with the World Bank on improving skills in India. The partnership is one example of the World Bank’s efforts to mobilize funding, ideas and innovations from private sector and philanthropic actors in solving development challenges around the world, including the need to prepare the workforce for a changing job market.

According to World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) 2019 on the The Changing Nature of Work, technology is playing a key role in reshaping every industry and in raising the bar for skills in every profession. More than 12 million youth between 15 and 29 years of age are expected to enter the working age population in India every year for the next two decades. The government’s recent skill gap analysis concludes that by 2022, another 109 million or so skilled workers will be needed in 24 keys sectors of the economy.

At present, however, school leavers have few opportunities to acquire job specific skills; only 2.3 percent of India’s workforce has received some formal skills training. To address the issue, the Government of India’s National Skill Development Mission aims to train approximately 400 million people across the country by 2022. To support the country’s vision, the World Bank is currently working through the $250 million Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) to help India’s growing young workforce acquire market-relevant skills needed in today’s highly competitive job market.

“Through the new program, we hope to strengthen our engagement with the private sector in India, support interventions that are innovative, improve the quality of school education and deepen our work in the area of skills development,” said Shabnam Sinha, World Bank’s Lead Education Specialist in India.