THE Private Sector Federation (PSF) believes that recent efforts to boost the level of local skills will help businesses to cut back on costs incurred in hiring foreign employees to offer basic skills. The CEO of PSF, Hannington Namara, says that the country no longer needs to solicit skills from the region and international markets following efforts to raise the level of local skills needed to leapfrog the economy to middle income status."The Technical Vocational Education and Training-TVET programme offered generally should cater for minimum skills required,” he said during a press briefing for the second TVET expo held at PSF offices in Gikondo, Kigali.The TVET programme is an initiative by the Government through the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to train and raise skills in several sectors as a way of bridging the skills gap."The skills may not be a big problem; perhaps the question could be how we sort out the small skills gaps that are there with the technology,” Namara said.The government plans to channel 60 percent of its education budget to vocational education by 2017 up from the current 40 per cent. Government targets to have 88 government-owned technical schools as well as 210 private ones.The business community has relied on skills mainly from the east African region which, according to experts, is an additional cost that reduced competitiveness at both local and international markets."This is another step taken. As we are aware, there is no economy that can develop without its own skills (base) and with growing competitiveness in the market, reliance on a country’s own skills is the only way out,” commented Davis Mukiza, a Kigali-based consultant.Namara said that the programme has so far raised enough skills for various sectors including hospitality and tourism, ICT, technical services and assembly, beauty and aesthetics, mining and mineral processing, multimedia and film making industry.Other sectors that will benefit from the initiative are construction and building, agriculture and food processing, clean and renewable energy which have been facing major skills constraints.The Director General of Workforce Development Agency, Jerome Gasana, said that the agency together in partnership with the Private Sector Federation is carryingout the second TVET expo as a way of showcasing the available local skills."It is important that we are having PSF getting involved in technical and vocational training and this expo will help to expose opportunities that we have so far achieved,” he said.The expo slated to start from November 1-6 this year is expected to bring together over 204 exhibitors from various private companies, TVET institutions in hospitality and tourism sectors, construction and building services among others.Accordingly, exhibitors will get an opportunity to sell and market their products, and network with the business community and other stakeholders.