外貿協會培訓中心

Due to the rapid growth of imports and exports in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Taiwan’s economy was enjoying an upswing.  Constrained by the prevailing regulated educational system, business courses and foreign languages had long been treated as separated disciplines in this country’s tertiary education.  As a result, the supply of young professionals trained with the two-pronged approach fell far short of the demand of the local business community. Therefore the Executive Yuan approved the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ (MOEA) petition to set up the International Trade Institute (ITI) under TAITRA’s jurisdiction.  With the support of Mr. Wang Chien-shien, then Vice-Minister of MOEA, TAITRA invited representatives from the government sector, private sector as well as academic circles for their consulting and came up with the framework of the International Business Administration Program (IBAP), in which university or college graduates looking for a career in international trade are recruited for two-year intensive training.  

The leap from the already established “On-the-Job Training Courses” (scheduled at irregular intervals) to a full-time ”Pre-career Training Program” was a great one.  However, it was soon discovered that the two programs complemented each other---each program catering for the needs of a different kind of person---and over a short period of time, TAITRA metamorphosed into a full-fledged training organization. In the meantime, its physical existence since then extended from the Taipei World Trade Center in Taipei to the two ITI campuses in Hsinchu with one located on Kuang-Fu Road and the other on Dong Shan Street. At present, the Hsinchu Campuses offer five residential post-graduate programs with different combination of trade and foreign language courses as curriculum.

 

Since TAITRA’s inception in 1970, it has been mandated to help cultivate the export markets for the business community.  Over the past decades, it has developed a well-coordinated trade promotion and information network composed of a staff of over 850 trained specialists stationed in its headquarters in Taipei, four local branch offices in Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung as well as 48 overseas branch offices world-wide.

 

As time progresses it has been constantly exerting all its efforts to help those in need of assistance adapt themselves to fit in the ever-changing global business environment, for example, “MICE Training and Certification” program being one of the vivid examples.

 

In recent years, the rising economic power in Asia has turned Eastern Asia into a world factory, which in turn has made MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions) one of the industries the governments in this part of the world direct their attention to in terms of prospering their economy.  In 2005, MOEA started a four-year “MICE Training and Certification” program by authorizing ITI to run it. With the Nan-Kang Exhibition Center being integrated into TAITRA’s daily operation in March 2008, TAITRA has been expected to be the driving force for the growth of  the MICE talent bank in Taiwan.