MAKATI CITY, Philippines -- The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Agency (Tesda) have signed an agreement that would pave the way for near-hires to get training under a scholarship grant promised by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last year, BPAP chief executive officer Oscar Sañez said.

In an interview, Sañez said the memorandum of agreement also includes guidelines on how the P350-million scholarship grant will be exclusively used to train near-hires for the outsourcing industry in the Philippines.

Arroyo was expected to join but was not present during the signing of the agreement at the Tesda office early Monday, the BPAP CEO said.

The scholarship grant will come from the PGMA Training for Work Scholarship program, which offers vouchers to young graduates who have tried but failed to secure employment for lack of certain skills, thus the term near-hires.

Sañez said most near-hires require more training on English and other technical skills, such as software development. He said additional training is usually expensive and beyond the reach of most near-hires.

Under the BPAP-Tesda agreement, BPAP will take on the responsibility of distributing, allocating and promoting the vouchers to its member-organizations. BPAP is the country?s umbrella organization for the Philippine outsourcing industry. Tesda, on the other hand, will be in charge of certification (or accreditation) of training institutions and the disbursement of funds.

?BPAP won?t be holding the money,? Sañez clarified.

The PGMA Training for Work Scholarship program has been shown to have improved the recruitment rate for near-hires in the local outsourcing industry, BPAP said.

Last year, about 75 percent of near-hires for the call center industry were able to land a job after getting additional training under the scholarship grant. The recruitment rates for both the software and the animation industry were over 90 percent, following the grant. More than 80 percent of near-hires for the medical transcription industry also secured a job after training.

?PGMA [Arroyo's initials] has seen that the program has been very successful. So she promised to allocate more funds,? Sañez said, recalling an event BPAP had last year where they announced the organization?s roadmap to 2010.

The BPAP executive said the industry expects to train more than 50,000 near-hires this year, with about 42,000 landing a job based on the success rate last year.

?This will create a big impact on our industry where skills are becoming a problem,? he added.