‘Talento Panamá will be a program coordinated by the Secretary of Competitiveness and Logistics of the Ministry of the Presidency, together with MITRADEL, MEDUCA and INADEH. The goal is to promote technical education and professional training.  

Talento Panamá is part of a strategy to develop human resources and promote youth employment in Panama. The initiative has been developed with the support of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which has established a technical office to collaborate with the Ministry of Labor (MITRADEL), the National Institute of Professional Training and Education for Human Development (INADEH), and the Ministry of Education (MEDUCA).

“It is very necessary to provide technical and professional training to Panamanians as it has shown that those countries with better technical and professional education systems, such as Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, and Denmark have more competitive economies on a global level”, pointed out the Secretary of Competitiveness of the Ministry of the Presidency, Miguel Ángel Esbrí.

ILO has provided its vast expertise in human resources development and employment promotion through a Cooperation and Technical Assistance Convention signed with the Ministry of Work and Labor Development.  Among other goals, it aims to design and implement the administrative and technical structure of the Observatory of Labor, and create a system of statistics on labor supply and demand, while implementing new initiatives, such as the Talento Panama strategy.

The program is developed based on three core ideas: Training, Employment and Inclusion, and seeks to keep on promoting public-private alliances.

According to estimations, Panama needs 160,000 professional technicians.

“This government is betting on the creation of Technical Institutes with an investment of over 200 million balboas in the Superior Technical Institute of the East, the West and the Agriculture”, pointed out Esbrí.